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ILLUSTRATIONS 



OF THE 



LAW OF KINDNESS. 



11 As from the bosom of her mystic fountains, 

Nile's sacred water windeth to the main, 
Flooding each vale embosomed 'mong the mountains, 

From far Alata's fields to Egypt's plain : 
So from the bosom of the Fount of Love, 

A golden stream of sympathy is gushing ; 
And winding, first through intellect above, 

Then thro' each vale of mortal mind is rushing ; 
Sweeping the heart of iceberg and of stone, 

Purging humanity of every blindness, 
Melting all spirits earthly into one, 

And leaving holiness and joy — 'tis Kindness." 



D. K. Lee. 



. VX^ 



— 



BY REV. G. W. MONTGOMERY. 



NEW-YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY KIGGINS & KELLOGG, 

NO. 88 JOHN-STBEET. 

1854. 






Entered, according to A*U ot Congress, m the year 1341, 

By O. Hutchinson, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Cour* of lb* x/pited 

States, fo* the Northern District of Neir York. 



Bertram Smith 
5, 193^ 



STEREOTYPED BY 

GEORGE A. CURTXS, 

MKW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPB FOSNOaT, BOBT09. 



PREFACE 



1 



In preparing the second edition of this humble work 
for the press, the author still thinks that no apology is 
needed for the manner in which it is written, or for its 
want of originality. The style of its composition is, 
without doubt, defective in many respects — but the 
author has endeavored to avoid imperfection as far as 
possible. Its want of originality is compensated by the 
fact, that fresh and vigorous instances of the power of 
kindness, taken from real life, are its most influential 
illustrations, and are better calculated to convince men 
of its real strength to overcome evil, than any system 
of abstract reasoning whatever. The author would be 
wanting in justice to the public and to himself if he failed 
to express his gratitude for the favorable notice which 
has been extended to his production, for the kind reviews 
which it has received, and for those exhibitions of its 
faults in style and arrangement, which, he hopes, have 
oeen profitable to hirn. And if but one individual shall 
be induced, by the perusal of these illustrations, to ex- 
change the law of re^eige for the law of love, the author 
will consider it ar a j^le reward for his labors. 

Geo. W. Montgomery 
Auburn, March, 1842. 



CONTENTS. 






CHAPTER I 

Kindness and Revenge, 



• • 



CHAPTER II. 
The Power of Kindness, 

CHAPTER III. 
The Power of Kindness, 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Disarming Force of Kindness, 

CHAPTER V. 
Kindness and Insanity, 



CHAPTER VI. 
Kindness and Crime, . 



CHAPTER VII. 
Kindness and Ignorance, 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Kindness admired by all People, . 



CHAPTER IX. 



National Kindness, 



7 



18 



27 



42 



65 



8 1 



lie 



m 



150 






Tl CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

PAOB. 

Kindness and Persecution, 182 

CHAPTER XL 
Kindness and Punishment, * 205 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Blessings and Duty of practising the Law 

of Kindness, 216 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Character of Christ • . . . . .236 



LAW OF KINDNESS. 



CHAPTER I. 

KINDNESS AND REVENGE. 

Breathe all thy minstrelsy, immortal Harp ! 
Breathe numbers warm with love, while I rehearse— 
Delightful theme, resembling most the songs 
Which, day and night, are sung before the Lamb !— 
Thy praise, Charity ! thy labors most 
Divine ; thy sympathy with sighs, and tears, 
And groans ; thy great, thy God-like wish to heal 
All misery, all fortune's wounds, and make 
The soul of every living thing rejoice. 

Pollock's Course of Time, Book IX. 

As like physical causes produce like physical 
consequences — as vice most assuredly results in 
misery — so revenge calls forth hate ; for water 
does not more certainly tend to its level, than 
the exercise of malice and cruelty kindles the 
fires of anger and opposition in the soul. To 
small purpose has that individual perused the 
history of the world, who has not discovered 
that the common process of eradicating evil, has 






ff LAW OF KINDNESS. 

been to meet it with evil, and who has not seer, 
that the pathway of life has been almost univer 
Bally lighted by the horrible spirit of retaliation. 
And to as little purpose has he examined the 
records of nations and individuals, if he is not 
convinced that when the law of kindness has 
been practised, it has been as much more salu- 
tary in its influence, and as much more glorious 
in its results, than those of revenge, as virtue is 
more salutary and glorious than iniquity. For 
while retaliation is like the storm which sweeps 
through the forest in destruction, kindness is 
like the combined influence of the sun and the 
rain of the cloud, which germinates seed, ana 
unfolds their leaves, flowers and odors. 

The spirit of revenge has flooded the world 
with evil. Millions have been slaughtered, 
cities have been sacked and burned, nations 
have been swept from political life, reputations 
have been ruined, families filled with discord, 
friends turned into bitter enemies, — and all 
through revenge. If earth has a demon to 
dread, it is the power of retaliation. There is 
no clime but that has felt its blight, no soul but 
that has been more or less tainted by its poison. 
What has caused man to overwhelm his fellow- 
men with oppression and blood ? What has 
urged so many nations to slaughter the captives 
of their power in cold blood ? What brings a 



KINDNESS AND REVENGE. § 

great proportion of the cases of litigation to the 
bar of the judge ? What engenders the quarrels 
existing in every community ? — REVENGE ! 
Hideous principle, murderous passion, which 
slew the Saviour, and martyred the sainted 
Stephen. 

To point out the consequences which have 
flowed from the practice of the law of revenge, 
is but to insure its condemnation in every re- 
flecting mind. And if we consider for a mo- 
ment, how many communities which have been 
desolated, might have been the abodes of hap- 
piness ; how many dwellings which have been 
filled with the fury of unhallowed passions, 
might now be echoing with songs of salvation 
and virtue, were it not for the law of revenge ; 
surely, the desire must be strong, and the prayer 
ardent, that the olive-branch of fcvercoming evil 
\*ith good, may take the place of the deadly 
njght-shade of retaliation. 

It may be said, however, that some of the 
principles of the Mosaic Law sanction the spirit 
of retaliation, in the requis'tion of an eye for an 
eye and a tooth for a tooth. But it must be re- 
membered that the Mosa>r. Law, rich as it is in 
its provisions for the wictaw and the orphan, for 
hospitality and for other excellent precepts, in- 
troduced the Viw of retaliation into its statutes 
only as thp ^venti/e of an evil which already 



10 LAW OF KINDNFSS. 

existed; the same as the lancet and the probe of 
the surgeon are necessary for the cure of a dis- 
eased limb. The Jews had been thoroughly 
debased in the Egyptian brick-yards, and the foul 
airs of idolatry ; they had been degraded by 
ignorance ; they were a headstrong, wicked 
people ; they were morally sick ; and it was 
necessary to apply the lancet of fear to them. 
But this retaliatory principle was not instituted 
as a universal rule of action. For when the 
world was properly fitted and prepared, then a 
nobler law was given in a system which is su- 
perior to all other systems in its doctrine and 
morality. 

That system is CHRISTIANITY. While 
the ablest philosophers, at the period of its estab- 
lishment, were, among many excellent princi- 
ples, advocating some of the worst features of 
revenge, Christianity, the child of heaven and 
the friend of man, lifted up its voice and pro- 
claimed the divine law, " OVERCOME EVIL 
WITH GOOD." A comment on this law was 
given by the Friend of sinners and the Saviour 
of the world. What was that comment ? Was 
it like the conduct of David, who stole the be- 
loved wife of his bravest general, yet whose jus- 
tice compelled him to indignantly condemn that 
rich man, who, with great flocks around him, 
took by force the only lamb of his poor neigh- 



KINDNESS AND REVENGE. 11 

bor ? Was it like the kiss of Judas, the smile 
of treachery, the stmg of ingratitude ? Very far 
from it. Throughout ail his ministry, he met 
his foes with benevolence. And wnen, by the 
influence of perjured witnesses, his condemna- 
tion was effected; when he had endured ths. 
nailing to the cross ; when his enemies wero 
adding insult to murder, by mocking and jeer 
ing him in his agonies ; then it was he prayed. 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not ivhat 
they do." This was the Saviour's illustration 
of the law, " Love your enemies." And the il- 
lustration is more sublime, if possible, than the 
law itself — more glorious in practice than in 
theory. For who can remember that this 
prayer was uttered by the Saviour for his foes, 
when enduring the excruciating pangs of a cru- 
cifixion which those very foes had brought upon 
him, without admitting, not only that he was 
the " Son of God," but that his conduct was the 
perfection of kindness ? 

The interesting question now arises, What 
influence has this law and its comment upon us ? 
Brought up and educated in the school of our 
Saviour; living in a land, which, above all 
others, calls itself Christianized ; existing be- 
neath the banners of the Gospel, incomparably 
xhe most noble system of doctrine and moral 
ethics extant; how are we influenced by the 



12 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

law of kindness ? Do we love our enemies, 
and overcome evil with good? Far from it! 
We deliberately fold up the banner of Christ, 
put aside the laws which God has made for us, 
voluntarily submit ourselves to the requirements 
of the Mosaic Law, and are governed by th< 
principle of " an eye for an eye, and a toot! 
for a tooth." How many thousands of dollars 
are spent in our halls of litigation simply to 
satisfy revenge ! How many individuals will 
pursue, with untiring industry, the most ques- 
tionable means to compass the destruction of 
another person, against whom a grudge is cher- 
ished ! And how many persons there are, who 
subscribe to the law of revenge written in the 
code of duelling, and demand blood as a satis- 
faction for a real or supposed injury ! Some of 
these instances are most horrible in their conse- 
quences, developing blight and misery, sacri- 
ficing useful lives, and throwing helpless widows 
and orphans upon society without a supporter or 
protector. Let the following facts demonstrate 
this dreadful position. In the early part of 
March, in 1803, a duel was fought, for a very 
trivial affair, in Hyde Park, England, between a 
lieutenant in the navy and a military ofhcer. 
The distance was six paces. The third and 
fourth fingers of the right hand of the naval 
officer were torn off by the first fire. Wrapping 



MNDNESS AND REVENGE. 13 

a handkerchief around it, he grasped his pisto 
in his left hand. At the second fire, both fell. 
The military officer was shot through the head, 
and instantly expired. The lieutenant was shot 
through the breast. On being told that the 
wound of his opponent was mortal, he thanked 
Heaven that he had lived thus long. And a few 
minutes before he died, he requested that a 
mourning ring on his finger should be given to 
his sister, with the assurance that the present 
was the happiest moment in his life. In 1806, 
Mr. Colclough, of Wexford, Ireland, offered him- 
self to the electors of that county for a seat m 
Parliament. Some dispute occurred between 
him and Mr. Alcock, the opposing candidate, 
concerning a few votes, which Mr. Alcock in- 
sisted Mr. Colclough should not receive. Mr, 
Colclough refused to reject them, and a duel 
was the consequence. At the first fire, Mr. 
Alcock shot his opponent, who had been his 
former intimate friend and companion, through 
the heart, and he died instantly. This result 
so operated on Mr. Alcock, that he ended his 
days in insanity — while his sister, who had 
been well acquainted with Mr. Colclough, soon 
went to her grave, a maniac.^ In 1804, the 

* See " Progress of Duelling in the 19th Century,'' in 
\he New York Albion, for 1839, Nos. 6 and 7. 
2 



.4 LAW OF KINDNESS 

amiable and talented Hamilton lost his life in a 
.luel v ith Burr, on account of some expression? 
n a political pamphlet, purporting to have 
originated with Gen. Hamilton — -for which this 
cruel result was demanded by a wicked code of 
honor. On the 24th of February, 1838, Mr, 
Cilley, of Maine, and M*. Graves of Kentucky, 
met in Washington, and for a most trivial provo- 
cation between them, fired at each other three 
times with rifles. At the third fire, Mr. Cilley 
fell dead — his wife was widowed, his children be- 
came orphans, and his country was deprived of 
the services of an excellent and promising son™ 
In addition to these melancholy instances, those 
savage duels which have been fought in the 
South Western States with the murderous rifle 
or the bloody bowie-knife, may be referred to, 
as frightful exhibitions of the spirit of retalia- 
tion. And yet this destruction — which makes 
widows and orphans mourn ; which deprives 
community of some of its best ornaments ; and 
which stains the hands of man with the blood 
of his brother — is simply the law of revenge 
adopted by a certain class of society, whose 
countenance has made it honor to demand life 
as the satisfaction of offended pride. But 
though such conduct may be deemed honorable 
in the panance of this world, yet, in the sight 
of God and all correct conceptions of right, it is 



KINDNESS AND REVENGE. It* 

ashionable murder. An individual who refuses 
a challenge, is far more honorable, and exhibits 
a greater degree of moral courage, than he who 
accepts it. Most persons, in accepting chal- 
lenges, are prompted by the fear of being brand- 
ed as cowards, if they decline to endanger their 
own lives, or those of their fellow-men, in such 
a cause. Hence it requires more firmness to 
resist the opinion of duellists, than it does to 
meet the deadly contest. Those men who have 
resisted this opinion, have received praise for 
their moral strength. One instance will be 
given. In 1800, Major Armstrong, of the Brit- 
ish army, challenged the celebrated Sir Eyre 
Coote, who refused to meet him. When this 
fact became known to the Commander-in-Chieli 
the following letter was addressed to Sir Eyre 
Ooote : " His Majesty," said the Adjutant-Gen- 
eral in this communication, " considers the con- 
iuct of Mr. Armstrong, in having endeavored to 
ground a personal quarrel on the evidence, 
which you gave in conformity to your duty, on 
your oath, before a General Court-Martial, as 
militating not less against the principle of public 
c ustice, than against the discipline of the army 
and his Majesty has been pleased to direct, that 
it should be signified to you in the strongest 
terms, that by having had recourse to the laws 
of the country on this occasion, you have dis» 



16 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

played a spirit truly commendable as a soldier, 
and peculiarly becoming the station you hold in 
lis Majesty's service, to which you have ren 
dered a material benefit by furnishing an exam- 
ple, which his Majesty has ordered to be pointed 
out as worthy the imitation of every officer, 
under similar circumstances."^ How pitiful 
and degrading is duelling, when compared with 
such conduct, or with the conduct of the Sav- 
iour, which, in its own power and sublimity, 
illustrated the divine law, " love your enemies ! " 
Yet we still claim to be a Christian people, even 
when enlightened portions of community sanc- 
tion a rule that is a direct contradiction of one 
of the most prominent precepts in the Christian 
statutes. 

In the plenitude of his wisdom and the divin- 
ity of his thoughts, our Saviour deemed that 
man could, and that it was his duty to " over- 
come evil with good," as well as an imperative 
practice in the Christian profession, to "love his 
enemies." And whenever and wherever the 
Law has been put into direct operation, it has 
succeeded in a most admirable manner. Though 
our passions may rise up, and erroneous educa- 
tion intervene, to make us be.ieve that retal- 
iation is necessary, and that thorough kindness 

* New York Albion, Vol 1., p. 50, 



KINDNESS AND REVENGE. 17 

is a dangerous instrument, yet it needs but 
to be tried in order to be embraced. For 
when an individual follows its dictates, he finds 
that it affords hi in such powerful influence over 
others, as to lead him to the conclusion, that the 
law of kindness is the most effectual method of 
subduing enmity. This position will be sus- 
tained by historical facts. 

2* 



CHAPTER II. 

THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 

The quality of mercy is not strained ; 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed ; 
It blesses him who gives, and him who takes / 
7 T is mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown j 
It is an attribute of God himself. 



-We do pray for mercy ; 



And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy. 

Shakespeare. 

The first illustration of the effects of the law 
of kindness, which will be adduced, is the con 
duct of Joseph towards his brethren, exhibiting, 
as it does, the superior power of "love your 
enemies" over "hate your enemies." On ac- 
count of the dreams which prefigured the future 
exaltation of Joseph, his brethren looked upon 
him as their enemy. In the spirit of revenge, 
they plotted his murder ; and though, by the in- 
tercession of one of their number, his life was 
spared, yet they sold him as a slave, no doubt 
with the hope that they should never again hear 
fiom the dreamer. All this was pure wicked- 
ness, and about as cunning a plan as revenge 



THE P0WE1 OF KINDNESS. 19 

generally conceives. But it did not effect the 
desired object. For, when, through a train of 
circumstances, Joseph obtained the highest 
office under Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and his 
wicked brethren, through famine, were driven 
into Egypt to buy corn, he met them in all the 
fulness of the law of love. And his kindness 
so wrought upon them, so subdued their enmity, 
that they became entirely reconciled to him, and 
cheerfully submitted to his rule. Joseph loved 
— his brethren hated. And it need scarcely 
be asked, which party was most happy, and 
whose conduct resulted in the most good — his 
brethren, trembling in the fear of conscious guilt, 
or Joseph, who could so disarm himself of re- 
venge, as not only to forgive their very serious 
crimes, but also to crowd upon them the choicest 
tokens of his fraternal affection? In this in- 
stance, the exercise of the law of kindness was 
completely successful, and changed enemies, 
who were filled with a murderous spirit, into 
reconciled and affectionate friends. 

It is evident to every reader of the history of 
oaul, King of Israel, that he was actuated by 
the most inveterate animosity against David, 
who afterwards filled the throne in Jerusalem. 
But, notwithstanding his malignity, he was soft- 
ened in a strange manner when the kindness of 
David met him in its full power. On one ocea- 



20 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

sion, Saul heard that David was in the " wil- 
derness of Engedi," and with an armed band 
he pursued him with the full purpose of mur- 
dering him. While engaged in this pursuit 
Saul entered the cave where David and his fol- 
lowers had secreted themselves. As Saul was 
completely in his power, the followers of David 
advised him to kill the king, which, unques- 
tionably, the law of retaliation would have jus- 
tified. David, however, pursued a more mag- 
nanimous course, the result of which is given 
in the language of the Bible. " But Saul rose 
up out of the cave, and went on his way. 
David also rose afterward, and went out of the 
cave, and cried after Saul, saying, " My lord the 
King." And when Saul looked behind him, 
David stooped with his face to the earth, and 
bowed himself. And David said to Saul, 
1 Wherefore nearest thou men's words, saying, 
behold, David seeketh thy hurt?' Behold, 
this day thine eyes have seen how that the Lord 
hath delivered thee to-day into my hand in the 
cave : and some bade me kill thee ; but mine 
eye spared thee ; and I said, I will not put forth 
my hand against my lord ; for he is the Lord's 
anointed. Moreover, my father, see, yea, see 
the skirt of thy robe in my hand ; for in that I 
cut off the skirt of thy robe, and killed thee not, 
know thou and see that there is neither evil nor 



T1IE POWER OF KINDNESS. 21 

transgression in my hand, and I have not sinned 
against thee ; yet thou huntest my soul to take 
it. The Lord judge between me and thee, and 
the Lord avenge me of thee : but my hand 
shall not be upon thee. As saith the proverb 
of the ancients, * Wickedness proceedeth from 
the wicked; but my hand shall not be upon 
thee.' After whom is the King of Israel come 
out ? after whom dost thou pursue ? after a 
dead dog, after a flea ? The Lord, therefore, be 
judge, and judge between me and thee, and 
see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of 
thy hand.' And it came to pass when David 
had made an end of speaking these words unto 
Saul, that Saul said, * Is this thy voice, my son 
David ? ' And Saul lifted up his voice, and 
wept. And he said to David, * thou art more 
righteous than I; for thou hast rewarded me 
good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil. And 
thou hast shewed this day how that thou hast 
dealt well with me ; forasmuch as when the 
Lord had delivered me into thy hand, thou kill- 
edst me not. For if a man find his enemy, will 
he let him go well away ? wherefore the Lord 
reward thee good, for what thou hast done unto 
me this day.' "* In this case, the law of kind- 
ness produced an excellent result; for it pre- 

' * 1 Samuel xxiv. 7—19. 



22 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

vented the execution of Saul's murderous de- 
sign, softened the iron purpose of his revenge, 
opened the fountain of his tears, and sent him 
home without any desire to accomplish the ob- 
ject for which he left it. 

Another most striking instance of the power 
of kindness occurred later in the history of the 
Jews than the foregoing fact. The king of 
Syria was at war with Israel. In order to over- 
come the armies of Israel, Ben-hadad formed 
two plans of ambush to entrap them. But the 
king of Israel, being timely informed of those 
plans, was enabled to escape them so certainly, 
that Ben-hadad concluded that some one of his 
servants had been treacherous and betrayed his 
plans to the enemy. Bat one of his servants 
informed him, that there was no treaciiery m 
the case ; that the king of Israel obtained his 
information from the prophet Elisha, who, by 
the power of inspiration, could read the thoughts 
of the heart. Vexed by the defeat of his plans, 
Ben-hadad, learning that Elisha was in Dothan, 
sent an army to make him captive. They sur- 
rounded the city in the night. In the morning, 
instead of assaulting the city, the whole host of 
Syria was smitten with blindness, in answer to 
a prayer sent up to Heaven by the prophet. 
Elisha then went forth to the host, and said to 
them, " This is not the wav, neither is this the 



THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 23 

city ; follow me, and I will lead you to the man 
whom ye seek."^ They followed him, and he 
led them into Samaria; so that when their eyes 
were opened, they discovered that they were in 
the midst of their foes and at their mercy. 
When the king of Israel perceived that they 
were in his power, he inquired of the prophet, 
14 My father, shall I smite them?"t Now, un- 
questionably, the prophet might, by a single 
word, have slain the Syrians, deluged the streets 
of Samaria with their blood, and sent wailing 
and despair into Syria. But he uttered no such 
word. He answered the king, " Thou shalt not 
smile them ; wouldst thou smite those whom 
thou hast taken captive with thy sword and thy 
bow? — set bread and water before them that they 
may eat and drink, and go to their master." t 
The king obeyed the prophet — fed them, and 
sent them to their own country. The effect of 
this splendid exhibition of the law of kindness, 
is given in the simple language of the historian : 
" SO THE BANDS OF SYRIA CAME NO 
MORE INTO THE LAND OF ISRAEL." $ 
They were so touched by generosity, so subdu- 
ed by affection, that they could no more appear 
in arms against Israel — they were enemies most 

* 1 Kings vi. 19. f 2 Kings vi. 21. 

1 2 Kings vi. 22. § 2 Kings vi. 23. 



24 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

effectually overcome; for the fire of love had 
melted their enmity. How very different this 
result from that which followed the harsh con- 
duct of Rehoboam, son of Solomon, when he 
ascended the throne ! The congregation of 
Israel came to him, and said, " Thy father made 
our yoke grievous; now, therefore, make thou 
the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy 
yoke which is put upon us, lighter, and we 
will serve thee."^ After consulting with his 
young men, Rehoboam answered, " My father 
made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your 
yoke ; my father chastised you with whips, but 
I will chastise you with scorpions."! He might 
evidently have conciliated the people by kind- 
ness ; but by pursuing a course of malignity, he 
introduced rebellion into his dominions ; for ten 
of the tribes revolted against him, and formed a 
separate kingdom, which never again united 
with the rest of the Jews ; but was frequently 
embroiled in war with them until the ten tribes 
were carried away into captivity. In this case, 
Rehoboam added evil to evil; and the conse- 
quence was discord, bloodshed, and anarchy. 
Elisha, on the contrary, met evil with good; and 
his enemies were changed into affectionate 
friends, who refused to lift the hand of opposi- 

* I Kings xii. 4. f * Kings xii. 14. 



THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 23 

tion against him or his country. The contrast 
between the result of love and hate, is very 
obviously marked in these convincing instances. 
Hate and revenge as surely ended in bloodshed 
and war, as love and kindness rooted up every 
weed of animosity and gave birth to respect 
and affection. Rehoboam multiplied his ene- 
mies by harshness — and Elisha gained many 
friends among the pagan Syrians by forbearance 
and goodness. 

The power of the law of kindness is beauti- 
fully exhibited in the events with which the 
apostle Peter was concerned, at the betrayal of 
Christ. When Peter denied his Lord, and in 
his fear declared that he knew not the man, 
his bitter tears would never have flowed, nor 
his sorrow have been so pungent and complete, 
had not recollections of the kindness of his 
Lord came thronging over his feelings, power- 
fully contrasting his base ingratitude with that 
love which had instructed and blessed him. 
Peter bowed under it — he could not withstand 
the good with which his evil was met — and he 
mourned his defection with sincere repentance, 
and was ever after true to his Saviour, even 
unto death. 

After the venerable Evangelist, John, had re- 
turned from his banishment to the isle of Pat- 
mos, he made it his duty to visit the various 
3 



26 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

churches, to consult their prosperity and wel- 
fare. On one occasion he observed an intelli- 
gent-looking man, who, after a time, became a 
member of one of the churches. But this man 
soon became corrupt and intemperate, through 
the influence of bad company, and at last fled tc 
a band of robbers, of whom he was made cap- 
tain. When John, to his great grief, heard 
these facts, he exposed himself in the haunts of 
the robbers, and when taken, said, " Lead me to 
your captain." When the bandit saw John, he 
fled ; but the apostle pursued him, saying, " My 
son, why flyest thou from thy father, unarmed 
and old ? — fear not ; as there yet remaineth 
hope of salvation — believe me, Christ hath sent 
me." Before the kind entreaties of John, the 
robber trembled and wept ; and finally returned 
to his Christian companions and became an ex- 
emplary man. * 

In these instances we discover the power of 
kindness ; and they prove that it is more effi- 
cacious than revenge : for if revenge had been 
exercised in regard to these persons, the results 
would have been entirely different from those 
which were brought about by the divine rule 
of overcoming evil with good. 

# See Goodrich's Ecclesiastical History, pp. 68. 69 



CHAPTER III. 

THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 

The hand that wiped away the tears of want, 
The heart that melted at another's wo, 
Were his ; and blessings followed him." 

If we leave the Scriptures, and examine the 
records of history and experience, we find the 
most illustrious examples to exhibit the influ- 
ence of the law of kindness in opening the 
fountain of goodness in the heart. These in- 
stances are not mere anecdotes, the stale out- 
breakings of fallacy ; but they are facts whose 
truth is beyond doubt. And, so little is the law 
of loving enemies practised, that it is our duty 
to pile fact upon fact, until demonstration shall 
become so open and powerful, that to depart 
from it shall be blind and wilful resistance of 
iriith. For, so sure as there is a God who 
rules in the universe ; so sure as he has spoken 
to the world through the revelation of his will ; 
so sure as Christ died for his foes, forgiving 
them the sin of his murder ; so sure it is, that 
the law of kindness is the true governing prin- 
ciple between man and his fellows. 



28 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

The first illustration to be presented under 
this head, is the case of the benevolent Howard. 
John Howard was born about the year 1727, 
in the village of Clapton, near London. From 
the year 1773 to 1790, the year in which he 
died, he spent his whole time in endeavoring to 
ameliorate the condition of prisoners of various 
characters. In this sublime employment, he 
chose to apply the fortune with which he was 
favored. And most nobly did he discharge his 
assumed duty. He personally visited and in- 
spected nearly all the prisons and jails in Eng- 
land, Ireland, and Scotland — and so well was 
he convinced that neglect, brutal treatment, 
filth, and undue severity, only serve to harden 
the heart of the offender, that, by his represen- 
tations to government, a great reformation was 
effected in the houses of confinement and the 
situation of prisoners. He visited the continent 
of Europe several times for the same object. 
He was the friend of the unfortunate. No 
matter how loathsome the dungeon, or degraded 
and hardened its inhabitants; his voice of mercy 
was there heard, and his kindness was mani- 
fested, as the best means of subduing and win- 
ning the sinner : for his familiarity with, and 
his conduct towards victims of all degrees of 
wickedness, perfectly convinced him that no 
person was so debased, or his feelings so cal- 






THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 29 

lous, but that he could be reached and softened 
by kindness. Blows, chains, starvation and 
neglect, only turned the heart into iron, and 
froze the better feelings of human nature to 
their deepest fountain ; but no sooner was the 
angel voice of Howard heard, and his kindness 
felt, than the long-sealed feelings were opened, 
the dried-up sources of tears were rilled, the 
waters of sorrow flowed, and the heart of sin 
became radiated with deep and undying love 
tor its benevolent visiter. This kindness was 
the principle which ever actuated Howard ; and 
so devoted was he to its dictates, and so earnest 
in the discharge of his God-like object, that he 
yielded up his life in Tartary, while on a tour 
of benevolence, where his bones are now moul- 
dering into the dust of the grave. 

John Howard constantly walked according to 
the law, "overcome evil with good.' , And, 
even if we leave out of the account the great 
blessings which accrued to others from his con- 
duct, we find, in the respect and love which 
exist for his memory, how advantageous is the 
adoption of the divine law. For, wberever the 
name of John Howard is known, his memory 
is enshrined in the hearts and affections of 
thousands ; while he is reverenced as one of 
those glorious stars in human life, who, in imi« 
3* 



30 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

tation of the " Saviour of the world," " went 
about doing good."^ 

The next instance is that of Fenelon. Fene- 
lon was a Roman Catholic, and Archbishop of 
Cambrai, in France. He was a man of the 
finest feelings, of the greatest benevolence, and 
he uniformly practised the law " overcome evil 
with good." He was kind and affable to the 
lowly, mild and courteous to the ignorant, phi- 
lanthropic to the miserable, and ever gentle 
both to friend and foe. The consequence was, 
that he won all hearts. His diocese was often 
the theatre of war — but the English, Germans, 
and Dutch even surpassed the inhabitants of 
Cambrai in their love and veneration for him. 
At such times, he gathered the wretched intr 
his residence and entertained them; for his 
known goodness had surrounded him with a 
power which even contending armies could not 
resist ; and the consequence was, that his dwell- 
ings were safe, even when towns and villages 
were lying in smoking ruins around him. The 
following is an instance of his great kindness. 
He observed one day, that a peasant, who had 
been driven from his home, and to whom Fene- 
lon had given shelter, ate nothing. He enquir- 

• See Memoirs of Howard, by J. Baldwin Brown. 



THE SOWER OF KINDNESS. 31 

ed the reason. " Alas ! my lord," said the poor 
man, " in making my escape from my cottage, 
I had not time to bring off my cow, which was 
the support of my family. The enemy will 
drive her away, and I shall never find another 
so good." Fenelon, availing himself of his 
privilege of safe conduct, immediately set out, 
accompanied by a single servant, and drove the 
cow back himself to the peasant.^ By thus 
walking according to the law of overcoming 
evil with good, he gained the affection of all. 
The peasantry loved him as their father — and, 
long after his death, their tears would flow when 
they said, " There is the chair on which our good 
Archbishop used to sit in the midst of us ; we 
shall see him no more." What a crown of un- 
fading glory the law of love gave him ! 

The next illustration is that of Oberlin 
John Frederic Oberlin was born in the city 
of Strasburg, near the frontiers of France and 
Germany. At the age of twenty-six, and in 
the year 1767, he became pastor of a parish in 
a region of country fifteen or twenty miles from 
Strasburg, called the Ban de La Roche, whose 
inhabitants were semi-barbarians ; their schools 
were nominal; many of their teachers could 
not read ; the different villages could not com- 

*See Charming' s Miscellanies, p. 182. 



32 LAW OF KINDNESS 

municate with each other, from want of bridges 
and roads ; their agriculture was of the rudest 
kind ; while their lansrua^e was almost unintel- 
ligible to refined ears. These evils were doubly 
entailed upon them by their invincible igno- 
rance, the mother of superstition. 

Among these people Oberlin settled; and his 
only means of defence, were, a heart overflow- 
ing with good will to them, and a disposition so 
cultivated in the school of Christ, as to constant- 
ly make the law, " overcome evil with good," 
his rule of action. And most nobly did those 
means serve him. When he exhibited a desire 
to make improvements among them, the people 
of his charge became enraged, and even way- 
laid him for his destruction. But, by throwing 
himself among them, unarmed, and with a kind 
yet firm and collected manner, he subdued their 
resentment. By uniformly pursuing a course 
of mild irstruction, he obtained their confidence, 
until, by his influence and example, they suc- 
cessively opened roads between their villages 
and Strasburg, they reared more comfortable 
buildingr,, they adopted a better mode of culti- 
vation, they built good school-houses, and ob- 
tained more experienced teachers. Very soon, 
by the directions of this extraordinary man, the 
barren wilderness began to smile with well cul- 
tivated fields, neat and convenient dwellings, 



THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 33 

while happiness entered every abode, and reli- 
gion was found on every family altar. 

All this change was accomplished by the law 
of kindness, connected with an ardent persever- 
ance and a knowledge of human nature and its 
wants. And not only did he subdue all hearts 
around him, but his Christian conduct obtained 
for him an honorable fame in all the nations 
where his name is known. When he died, 
which took place in 1826, the love of him was 
so universal and strong, that the inhabitants of 
the remotest village in his parish, though it 
rained in torrents, did not fail to come and take 
the last look of their " dear father ." His fu- 
neral procession was two miles in length ; and 
so strongly had his benevolence and kindness 
penetrated all hearts, that tears flowed from 
both Catholic and Protestant eyes, while regret 
for his loss and respect for his memory, animat- 
ed all minds alike. His gravestone now stands 
in the "church-yard among the mountains," and 
there is recorded on it the simple and express- 
ive fact that he was for " fifty-nine years the 
Father of the Ban de La Eoche."^ 

The next illustration in the law of kindness, 
is found in the conduct of William T. Keese, a 

* Universalist Expositor, Vol. IIT., p. U9. Penny 
Magazine, Vol. VII., p. 220. 



f>4 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

clergyman of the Universalist denomination. 
He was pastor of the Universalist society m 
Buffalo, N. Y. He entered upon his charge m 
the year 1834 ; during the summer of which, 
Buffalo was filled with dismay and mourning by 
a dreadful visitation of cholera. But while the 
angel of death was strong in his work, and 
sweeping crowds to the tomb, Mr. Reese was 
active in visiting the sick, irrespective of theii 
faith or condition. Armed by the spirit of 
Christian love, which destroyed the fear of con- 
tagion, he devoted his days and nights to ad- 
ministering relief, consolation and sympathy to 
the dying and the mourning. And in this work 
of kindness, so full of moral sublimity, he was 
smitten by cholera, and died September 6, 1834. 
But so conspicuous was his devoted love, that it 
won the respect and admiration of all sects, dis- 
armed bigotry of its frown, and embalmed his 
memory in the hearts of multitudes in Buffalo, 
who had no confidence in his doctrine. And so 
universally was he esteemed, that his funeral 
was attended by crowds from all denominations. 
Well was it said of him : — 

" Friend of the friendless ! when high o'er the land 
The swift-winged pestilence, with gory hand, 
Waved death's black banner through the la'bring air. 
In the lone aisle was heard thy rising prayer : 



THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 36 

Ajvh gently bending crer the bed of death, 
Th^ soothing voice relieved the falt'ring breath 
Calming the fired soul in the dissolving strife, 
And pointed heavenward to eternal life ! " 

The fact now to be exhibited, shows, in a 
lively manner, how an extraordinary instance 
of kindness has softened the asperities of op- 
position to a sect, whose peculiar forms and 
tenets are disbelieved by the mass of American 
people — I mean the conduct of the Sisters of 
Charity, an association of females in the Roman 
Catholic communion, who have dedicated them- 
selves wholly to benevolence. During the time 
when the angel of death, in the shape of 
Cholera, raged in Philadelphia, in the summer 
of 1832, a number of the Sisters of Charity 
from Montreal, voluntarily assumed the noble 
duty of attending the sick in that city. And 
though they were constantly in danger of in fee 
tion by the awful pestilence, and of being con 
signed to the tomb in a few hours, yet, armec 
with a Christian spirit, they watched the sick 
and hovered around the couch of death like 
angels of mercy, courageous in their benevolence 
when others were fleeing in abject fear. And 
when asked why they, Catholics in faith, were 
<o ready to assist Protestants and the opposers 
jf that faith, the answer in substance was, that 
to see a fellow-being, no matter of what na\rx or 



36 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

sect, in distress, was sufficient to excite theii 
endeavors to remove that distress. As a token 
of their warm thanks, the Corporation of Phila- 
delphia tendered a piece of silver plate to each 
of the Sisters for acceptance ; but they refused 
it, not only as contrary to their rules, but with 
a reply worthy alike of Christianity and the 
cause in which they were engaged : " If their 
exertions," said they, "have been useful to their 
suffering fellow-beings, and satisfactory to the 
public authorities, they deem it a sufficient 
reward, and indeed the only one which would 
be consistent with their vocation to receive." 
All this conduct is the pure spirit of the law of 
kindness. And it has gone farther in softening 
the opposition of the Protestants to the Catho- 
lics, than though an inquisition had been built 
in each state, with full power to destroy all dis- 
senters. For it gained the admiration and ap- 
probation of the reflecting in all denominations, 
and proved that the Sisters of Charity were 
actuated by the benevolence of Christ. 

The following beautiful lines, entitled " The 
Sisters of Charity," have a very appropriate 
application to this portion of my theme. Who 
the author of them is, I know not — they origi- 
nally appeared in a public newspaper. 

« She knelt beside his couch. Her fair, slight hands 
Were clasped upon her breast ; and from her lips 



THE TOWER OF KINDNESS. 37 

Her spirirs prayer broke murmur ingly. Her eyes, 
Large, daik, and trembling in their liquid light, 
Were turned to heaven in tears; and through her frame 
The panic of a moment chilly ran ; 
'T was but a moment ; and again she roje, 
And bent her form over the bed of torture, 
Like the fair lily o'er the troubled wave. 
Her eye was brighter, and her brow more calm, 
And, with untrembling hand, but pallid cheek, 
She ministered unto him. He 7vas dying ; 
The pestilence had smitten him ; and he, 
Like to a parchment shrivelled in the flame, 
Withered and shrank beneath it. His fair brow 
Grew black and blasted : and, where smiles had bright- 
ened, 
Horror, despair, agony, now grinned ! 
His frame, knotted and writhed, lay an unsightly lump, 
Wrung with unearthly tortures; and his soul 
Struggled in death, with shrieks, and howls, and curses* 
Men veiled their eyes and fled. Yet she stood there ,* 
Still sweetly calm and unappalled, she stood ; 
Her soft hand smoothed his torture-wrinkled brow, 
And held the cool draught to his fevered lips ; 
Her sweet voice blessed him : and his soul grew calm. 
Death was upon him, black and hideous death, 
Rending his vitals with a hand of flame, 
And wrenching nerves, and knitting sinews up, 
With iron fingers ; — yet his soul grew calm, 
And, while her voice in angel accents spoke, 
Rose, with her prayers, to heaven : — one look she gave — 
He laid — a black' ning, foul, and hideous corse! 
With sick'ning heart the pure one turned, away — 
To bend her, fainting, o'er another couch. 

###### 



38 LAW OF KINI1NESS. 

iTe who dare peril on the tented field, 
And write your courage in your brothers blood, 
Who, 'neath the cannon's death-cloud seek a grave, 
And call your madness glory — look and blush" 

The instances which have been introduced, 
present the great fact, that the law of kindness 
was uniformly successful and beautiful in opcr 
ation, and never failed to brighten its pathway 
with blessings. Yet the individuals who ex- 
erted it, were members of different denomina- 
tions of professing Christians. Howard was a 
moderate Calvinist ; Fenelon and the Sisters of 
Charity were Catholics ; Oberlin and Reese, 
were IJniversalists. Yet, with, one uniform law 
of kindness, of the same spirit both in precept 
and practice, they achieved the most splendid 
results. The prisoner was melted and sub- 
dued ; the respect and protection of contending 
armies were gained : semi-barbarous people 
were changed into civilized inhabitants ; the 
sick and dying were cheered ; the admiration 
of opposing sects was won. Having thus sub- 
limely illustrated the law of kindness. theiT 
names are valued and their memories are 
warmly cherished by all classes, though they 
belonged to sects widely sundered from each 
other in creeds and ecclesiastical government. 
So true is it, that the spirit of Christ and the 
power of benevolence are not confined to one 



THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 39 

sect, or garnered up in one creed, but are mani- 
fested by all those whose hearts have been wa- 
tered by the dews of the heavenly truth, " love 
your enemies," irrespective of the denomination 
to which they severally belong. 

Can any individual, in view of these facts, 
doubt the efficacy of the divine precept, " over- 
come evil with good ? " Can they deliberately 
affirm that the strong arm of revenge is the best 
conqueror of evil ? — that retaliation is the surest 
mode of overcoming an enemy ? — that oppo- 
sition should be crushed by the iron power of 
force ? Can they declare that kindness is 
without influence ? — that the voice of love wi.l 
not reach and soften the soul long under the 
dominion of violence ? — that it will not subdue 
the stubbornness of bigotry? So far is this from 
being the fact — so sanguine do I feel in the 
power of kindness — that I am almost convinced, 
that there never yet was an instance in which 
kindness has been fairly exercised, but that it 
has subdued the enmity opposed to it. Its first 
effort may not succeed, any more than one 
shower of rain can reclaim the burning desert — 
but let it repeatedly shed the dew of its holy in- 
fluence upon the revengeful soul, and it will 
soon become beautiful with every flower of ten- 
derness. An individual can no more oppose 
the kindness which is continually and steadily 



40 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

manifesting itself towards him, than he can fan 
the flame of violent anger in his soul, when the 
most pure and charming music is flooding his 
senses with its rich harmony. He will as cer- 
tainly submit to its winning power, as the com- 
pass-needle yields to the influence of mag- 
netism. It is not in human nature to withstand 
a long course of kindness. Pride and stubborn- 
ness may, for a time, stay the tide of better feel- 
ings, like the waters of the stream pent up by 
gathering masses of ice ; but those better feel- 
ings will accumulate and increase, until they 
break down pride and stubbornness, and cause 
the repentant to exclaim like one of old, 
" Thou knowest that I love thee." Let any 
person put the question to his soul, whether, 
under any circumstances, he can deliberately 
resist continued kindness ? — and a voice of af- 
fection will answer, that good is omnipotent in 
overcoming evil. If the angry and revengeful 
person would only govern his passions, and 
light the lamp of affection in his heart, that it 
might stream out in his features and actions, he 
would soon discover a wide difference in his 
communion with the world. The gentle would 
no longer avoid him; friends would not ap- 
proach him with a frown ; the weak would no 
longer meet him with dread ; children would 
no longer shrink from him with fear ; he would 



THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 4 

find that his kindness wins all by its smile, giv- 
ing them confidence and securing their friend- 
ship. Verily I say to you, that kindness is 
mightier than the conqueror : for the conqueror 
subdues only the body— KINDNESS SUB 
DUES THE SOUL. 
4* 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 

"It is very true, as mother used to tell me, if yon 
want to love people, or almost to love them, just do them 
a kindness, think how you can set about to make them 
happier, and the love, or something that will answer the 
purpose, will be pretty sure to coine." — Rich Pooe 
Man, p. 11. 

The object of this chapter is to present an 
additional number of instances from the work- 
shop of human life, to exhibit the power of 
kindness in subduing enmity and changing foes 
into friends. And it will be observed here, as 
m the last chapter, that these instances are not 
dreams, the mere outbreakings of fancy or 
falsehood ; but they are tangible facts, as far 
beyond doubt as they are excellent in spirit. 

It is well known that Quakers, or Friends, 
have adopted the non-resistance principle, or 
the law, " overcome evil with guod." The 
founder of Philadelphia, William Penn, was 
completely armed with the spirit of this prin- 
ciple. When he visited this country, he came 
without cannon or sword, and with a determi- 
nation to meet the Indians with truth and kind- 
ness. He bought their land and paid them— 



THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 43 

he made a treaty with them and observed it — 
and he always treated them as men. As a 
specimen of the manner in which he met the 
Indians, the following instance is very striking. 
There were some fertile and excellent lands, 
which, in 1698, Penn ascertained were exclud- 
ed from his first purchase ; and, as he was very 
desirous of obtaining them, he made the pro- 
posal to the Indians that he would buy those 
lands, if they were willing. They returned for 
answer, that they had no desire to sell the spot 
where their fathers were deposited — but to 
" please their father Onas," as they named 
Penn, they said that he should have some of 
the lands. This being decided, they concluded 
the bargain, that Penn might have as much land 
as a young man could travel round in one day, 
" ' beginning at the great river Cosquanco,' now 
Kensington, * and ending at the great river 
Kallapingo,' now Bristol;" and, as an equiva 
lent, they were to receive a certain amount of 
English goods. Though this plan of measuring 
the land was of their own selection, yet they 
were greatly dissatisfied with it, after it had 
been tried ; " for the young Englishman chosen 
to walk off the tract of land, walked so fast and 
far, as to greatly astonish and mortify them- 
The governor observed this dissatisfaction, and 



44 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

a^ked the cause. * The walker cheated u* 
said the Indians. 

* ' Ah ! how can it be ? ' ^aid Penn ; ' did you 
nut choose yourselves to have the land meas 
ured in this way ? ' 

" ' True/ replied the Indians, ' but white broth 
er make a big walk.' 

" Some of Penn's commissioners, waxing 
ivarnr, said the bargain was a fair one, and in- 
sisted that the Indians ought to abide by it. and 
if not, should be compelled to it. 

" ' Compelled ! ' exclaimed Penn — • how cau 
you compel them without bloodshed? Don't you 
see this looks to murder ? ' Then turning with a 
benignant smile to the Indians, he said : ' Well, 
brothers, if you have given us too much land for 
the goods first agreed on, how much more will 
satisfy you?' 

" This proposal gratified them ; and they men- 
tioned the quantity of cloth, and number of fish- 
hooks, with which they would be satisfied. 
These were cheerfully given ; and the Indian? 
shaking hands with Penn, went away smiling. 
After they were gone, the governor, looking 
round on his friends, exclaimed, ' how sweet 
and cheap a thing is charity ! Some of you 
spoke just now, of compelling these poor crea- 
tures to stick to their bargain, that is, in plain 



THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 46 

English, to fight and kill them, and all about a 
little piece of land.' "* 

For this kind conduct, manifested in all his 
actions to the Indians, he was nobly rewarded. 
The untamed savage of the forest became the 
warm friend of the white stranger — towards 
Penn and his followers, they buried the war- 
hatchet, and ever evinced the strongest respect 
for them. And when the Colony of Pennsyl- 
vania was pressed for provisions, and none 
could be obtained from other settlements — which 
scarcity arose from the increasing number of in- 
habitants not having time to raise the necessary 
food — the Indians cheerfully came forward, and 
assisted the Colony by the fruits of their labors 
in hunting. This kindness they practised with 
pleasure, because they considered it an accom- 
modation to their " good father Onas " and his 
friends.! And though Penn has long been 
dead, yet he is not forgotten by the red men ; 
for many of the Indians possess a knowledge of 
ins peaceable disposition, and speak of him with 
a tone and feeling very different from what they 
manifest, when speaking of those whites who 
:ame with words of treachery on their tongues, 
md kegs of " fire-water " in their hands, and 
oppression in their actions. 

* See the Advocate of Peace, f See the Life of Penn, 



46 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

An intelligent Quaker of Cincinnati related. 
to me the following circumstance, as evidence 
that t:ie principle of non-resistance possesses 
great influence, even over the savage. During 
the last war, a Quaker lived among the inhabi- 
tants of a small settlement on our western fron- 
tier. When the savages commenced their des- 
olating outbreaks, every inhabitant fled to the 
interior settlements, with the exception of the 
Quaker and his family. He determined to re- 
main and rely wholly upon the simple rule of 
disarming his enemies with entire confidence 
and kindness. One morning, he observed 
through his window, a file of savages issuing 
from the forest in the direction of his house. 
He immediately went out and met them, End 
put out his hand to the leader of the party. 
But neither he nor the rest gave him any notice 
— they entered his house, and searched it for 
arms, and had they found any, most probably 
would have murdered every member of the 
family. There were none, however, and they 
quietly partook of the provisions which he 
placed before them, and left him in peace. At 
the entrance of the forest, he observed that they 
stopped and appeared to be holding a council. 
Soon one of their number left the rest, and 
came towards the dwelling on the leap. He 
reached the door, and fastened a simple white 



TUL DISARMING FORCE OF > USUNESS. 4 

feather above it, and returned to his band 
when they all disappeared. Ever after, tha 
white feather saved him from the savages ; foi 
whenever a party came by and observed it, it 
was a sign of peace to them. In this instance 
we discover that the law of kindness disarmed 
even savage foes, whose white feather told their 
red brethren, that the Quaker was a follower of 
Pemi and the friend of their race. 

How different was the conduct of the pilgrim 
lathers in reference to the Indians of New Eng- 
land ! When land was w r anted by the whites, 
it was taken — and if the Indians grumbled and 
jesisted, tbey were met with fire and sword. 
The consequences were legitimate, and were 
inch as might have been expected. The red 
man fought for the land of his fathers, and in 
desperation battled with those who brought the 
Bible in one hand, and a musket and a whiskey 
bottle in the other. He hid behind every tree 
to slay his foes — he issued from every forest to 
destroy his enemies — until a brand was in the 
dwellings of white men, and the scalps of their 
women and children were dangling at the belts 
of merciless savages. These were the bitter 
fruits of the manner in which the Indians wert 
treated in New England — fruit so different from 
the peace which followed the conduct of Wil 



48 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

Ham Perm, that one may be compared to the 
storm in its wrath, and the other to the benign 
influence of sunshine and falling dew. 

The consequence of kindness and confidence, 
united with firmness, was strikingly exempli- 
fied in the conduct of two individuals, each of 
whom stood at the head of a company of sol- 
diers, on our northern frontier, during a portion 
of the last war. Their names might be given, 
but as one is still lr* r ~'ig, they are suppressed. 
Both had strict discipline in their companies — 
but one produced it by excessive flogging — the 
other, by kindness and firmness. The result of 
the two modes of government, is as follows : — 
The soldiers of the severe captain hated him, 
and could they have obtained a favorable oppor- 
tunity in battle, would have shot him without 
hesitation. The soldiers of the other captain 
loved him, and if necessary, would have waded 
to their knees in blood to follow their beloved 
leader. 

The power of kindness in subduing enmity 
oetweeen individuals, is strikingly set forth in 
the following fact. Some Indians, in March, 
1783, attacked and scattered in every direction, 
a party of men, women, and children, belonging 
to a settlement made in Kentucky, by a brother 
of the celebrated Daniel Boone. Colonel Floyd 



THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 49 

having heard of the affair, instantly collected 
twenty-five men, and hastened to the place of 
battle. But the Indians formed an ambuscade 
for the Colonel and his party, which, as the) 
fell into it without discovering it, ended in theii 
defeat. The Colonel came near losing his life ; 
but Captain Wells, noticing that he was on foot, 
and that the enemy was after him, generously 
gave up his own horse, mounted the Colonel 
upon it, and then walked by the side of the 
horse, to support Floyd, lest he should be faint 
from his wounds, and fall off. " This act of 
Captain Wells was the more magnanimous, as 
Floyd and himself were not friends at the time* 
But the consequences of this very generous con- 
duct were most excellent. The enmity of 
Floyd was destroyed, and he and "Wells eve? 
after were firm friends. * 

The power of kindness to produce reforma 
tion, is nobly illustrated in many scenes of ex- 
istence — but perhaps as much so in the follow- 
ing fact, as in any. It is a story from real 
life, which appeared in the Monthly Reposi- 
tory, for August, 1825, published in London. 
The editor of the Repository observes, that he 
extracted it from a letter which was addressed 
to himself. 

* See Life of Boone, by Flint, p. 104. 

5 



50 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

" Seven or eight years before his decease, 
our friend found that one of his clerks had 
wronged him considerably, and I believe even 
put his life into his power. Without appearing 

to have discovered the circumstance, Mr. 

desired the young man to come to his dwelling- 
house in the afternoon ; he watched for his 
arrival, opened the door himself, and after lead- 
ing him up into a chamber and locking the 
door, informed him that all his misconduct was 
made known. Pale and trembling, the offender 
dropped upon his knees ; the master bade him 
not be terrified at the punishment, but think of 
the guilt of the deed which he had done ; and 
after saying as much as he thought would be 
profitable, he left him, carrying the key from 
the outside of the door. Before night he took 
him refreshments, talking to him again, and de- 
sired him to go to bed and reflect. When the 
succeeding day drew to a close, he visited him 
for the last time, saying, * I now come to release 
you ; here is a letter to a friend of mine in 
London, who knows nothing of your crime, and 
will give you immediate employment. Here is 
money,' added he, putting a purse into his hand. 
* to support you till your quarter's salary be- 
comes due.' He then conducted him out of 
the house, unseen by any one. This benevo- 
lent treatment awakened the gratitude and 



THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. SI 

effected the reformation of the young man, who 
]s now a person of highly respectable character." 
Such was the result of kindness in this case. 
Had harshness, however, been substituted for 
kindness, it would not have been surprising if 
the clerk, instead of becoming, " a person of 
highly respectable character," had gone deeper 
into crime, and ended his days either in Botany 
Bay or on the gallows ; as many a person has 
done before and since he was melted by subdu- 
ing affection. 

The late Dr. Bowditch, of Salem, Mass., was 
a man as eminent for his great and useful 
talents, as he was beloved by all who were 
acquainted with him. An instance is related 
of him, which is a complete manifestation of the 
command, " If thine enemy hunger, feed him , 
if he thirst, give him drink ; for in so doing, 
thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." 

" Dr. Bowditch had been preparing a plan of 
Salem, which he intended soon to publish. It 
had been the fruit of much labor and care. By 
some means or other, an individual in town had 
surreptitiously got possession of it, and had the 
audacity to issue proposals to publish it as his 
own. This was too much for Dr. Bowditch to 
bear. He instantly went to the person, and 
burst out into the following strain : — ' You vil- 
lain ! how dare you do this ? What do you 



52 LAW or KINDNESS. 

mean by it? If you presume to proceed any 
farther in this business, I will prosecute you to 
the utmost extent of the law.' The poor fellow 
cowered before the storm of his indignation, 
and was silent — for his wrath was terrible. 
Dr. Bowditch went home, and slept on it ; and 
the next day, hearing from some authentic 
source that the man was extremely poor, and 
had probably been driven by the necessities of 
his family to commit this audacious plagiarism, 
his feelings were touched, his heart relented, 
his anger melted away like wax. He went to 
him again, and said, ' Sir, you did very wrong, 
and you know it, to appropriate to your own 
use and benefit, the fruit of my labors. But I 
understand you are poor, and have a family to 
support. I feel for you, and will help you. 
That plan is unfinished, and contains errors that 
would have disgraced you and me, had it been 
published in the state in which you found it. 
I '11 tell you what I will do. I will finish the 
plan ; I will correct the errors ; and then you 
shall publish it for your own benefit, and I will 
head the subscription list with my name.' "* 

This simple fact adds great glory to the 
memory of this eminent man. It shows that 
he could command his passions, so as o forgive 

* Waldie's Library, Vol. VIII., p. 411. 



THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 53 

the person who had wronged him, and to over- 
come him with unexpected kindness. In this 
respect he was greater than Alexander— for in 
all the pride and luxury of a mighty nation 
Alexander, with enslaved kings at his feet, was 
a slave to himself. But Bowditch, in a case of 
real injury to himself, smothered his rising 
wrath, and overcame evil with good, and that, 
too, in a most substantial manner. Was not his 
conduct very beautiful — more noble than though 
he had exerted every effort to crusn the man 
who was driven by poverty to the commission 
of a wrong act ? Surely! — it was god-like, and 
worthy of all imitation. 

In the popular work entitled " Nicholas 
Nickleby," Dickens has depicted a firm of mer- 
chants, the CHEERYBLE BROTHERS, in 
a most delightful manner. They were bent on 
good — their hearts were overflowing with be- 
nevolence — and their greatest joy consisted in 
increasing the happiness of some one or more 
of their fellow-beings. The Cheeryble Broth- 
ers, though described and existing in a fictitious 
work, are said to be but the representatives of a 
firm of merchants who live in England, and are 
full of excellent deeds and the warmest kind- 
ness. The following noble fact concerning 
these truly good men, clearly shows the power 
of the law, " overcome evil with good." It is 
5* 



54 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

related in a paper published in Manchester, 
England. 

" The elder brother of this house of mer- 
chant-princes, amply revenged himself upon a 
libeller who had made himself merry with the 
peculiarities of the amiable fraternity. This 
man published a pamphlet, in which one of the 
brothers (D.) was designate.! as ' Billy Button,* 
and represented as talking largely of their 
foreign trade, having travelleis who regularly 
visited Chowbent, Bullock, Smithy, and other 
foreign parts. Some ' kind friend ' had told 
W. of this pamphlet, and W. had said that the 
man would live to repent of its publication. 
This saying was kindly conveyed to the libeller, 
who said that he should take care never to be 
in their debt. But the man in business does 
not always know who shall be his creditor. 
The author of the pamphlet became bankrupt, 
and the Brothers held an acceptance of his, 
which had been endorsed by the drawer, who 
had also become bankrupt. The wantonly li- 
belled men had thus become creditors of the 
libeller. They now had it in their power to 
make him repent of his audacity. He could not 
obtain his certificate without their signature, 
and without it he could not enter into business 
again. He had obtained the number of signa- 
tures required by the bankrupt laws, except one. 



THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 56 

"It seemed folly to hope that the firm of 
' Brothers ' would supply the deficiency. What ! 
they, who had cruelly been made the laughing- 
stock of the public, forget the wrong, and favor 
the wrong doer ! He despaired ; but the claims 
of a wife and children forced him at last to 
make the application. Humbled by misery, he 
presented himself at the counting-room of the 
wronged. W. was there alone, and his first 
words to the delinquent, were, ' Shut the door, 
sir ! ' sternly uttered. The door was shut, and 
the libeller stood, trembling before the libelled. 
He told his tale, and produced his certificate, 
which was instantly clutched by the injured 
merchant. 

" ■ You wrote a pamphlet against us once ! ' 
exclaimed W. The supplicant expected to see 
his parchment thrown into the fire ; but this was 
not its destination. W. took a pen, and writing 
something on the document, handed it back to 
the bankrupt. He, poor wretch, expected to see 
there, ' rogue, scoundrel, libeller,' inscribed ; 
but there was ; in fair, round characters, the sig- 
nature of the firm ! ' We make it a rule/ said 
W., ' never to refuse signing the certificate of 
an honest tradesman, and we have never heard 
you was anything else.' The tear started into 
the poor man's eyes. 

"'Ah!' said W., ' my saying was true. I 



56 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

said you would live to repent writing that 
pamphlet. I did not mean it as a threat ; I only 
meant that some day you would know us better, 
and would repent you had tried to injure us. I 
see you repent of it now.' ' I do, I do,' said the 
grateful man. ' Well, well, my dear fellow/ 
said W., ' you know us now. How do you 
get on? What are you going to do?' The 
poor man stated that he had friends who could 
assist him when his certificate was obtained. 
* But how are you off in the meantime?' And 
the answer was, that having given up every- 
thing to his creditors, he had been compelled to 
stint his family of even the common necessaries, 
that he might be enabled to pay the cost of his 
certificate. ' My dear fellow,' said W., ' this 
will never do — your family must not suffer. Be 
kind enough to take this ten pound note to your 
wife from me. There, there, my dear fellow — 
nay, don't cry — it will be all well with you yet. 
Keep up your spirits, set to work like a man, 
and you will raise your head yet.' The over- 
powered man endeavored in vain to express his 
thanks — the swelling in his throat forbade word*; 
he put his handkerchief to his face, and went 
out of the door crying like a child." 

Here we discover the proper result of kind- 
ness. If these truly good men had pursued a 
different course — if they had treated that unfor- 



THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 57 

lunate man with harshness — if they had refused 
to sign his certificate — how different would have 
been the consequences! His energies would 
have been crushed, hope would have deserted 
him, and, perchance, like multitudes before him, 
he would have fallen into intemperance and 
vice, and ended his days in prison. His family 
would have become the prey of gaunt poverty, 
his children would have been neglected, to grow 
up in ignorance and crime ; while his wife, if 
not driven to licentiousness by absolute want, 
would have gone down to the grave, like many 
others of her sex before her, broken-hearted. 
But kindness changed such fearful gleamings of 
horror into a bright morning of joy. The fallen 
man was cheered — his hopes were revived — a 
path was opened by which to retrieve himself — 
his generous creditors, whom he had treated so 
unkindly, took the last obstacle out of his path 
to prosperity — and not only this, they gave him 
means to keep his family in comfort, while he 
was collecting his energies for another effort m 
life. Poor fellow! well might his tongue refuse 
to do its office, and his eyes gush with tears of 
repentance and subdued feeling. 

The melting influence of kindness beams out 
of the following incident, which beautifully 
illustrates the object of this chapter. About a 
century since, a comic author employed an actor, 



53 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

" celebrated for mimicry," to visit the celebrated 
Dr. Woodward, of England, for the purpose of 
gaining a knowledge of his manner, person, 
and awkward delivery. The object was, to 
create laughter by having the actor mimic the 
doctor on the stage. To accomplish this, the 
actor, in the dress of a countryman, waited upon 
the doctor, declaring that his wife was sorely 
afflicted with diseases, and amazed him by sta- 
ting that she was borne down with an oppressive 
burthen of accumulated pains of the most oppo- 
site nature. After having gained the knowledge 
he wished, the actor awkwardly offered a guinea 
to the doctor as a fee. " Put up thy money, poor 
fellow," cried the doctor, " put up thy money. 
Thou hast need of all thy cash, and all thy pa- 
tience too, with such a bundle of diseases tied 
to thy back." The actor returned to the author, 
and gave such a correct and ludicrous imitation 
of the doctor, that his employer absolutely 
screamed with delight. But it appears that the 
kindness of the doctor had a very different effect 
from what the author anticipated ; for the mimic 
petrified him, by declaring, in the voice of warm 
and subdued feeling, "that he would sooner die 
than prostitute his talents to the rendering 
such genuine humanity a public laughing- 
stock."^ Had the doctor treated him harshly 

* Penny Magazine, Vol. L, p. 208 



THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 59 

and unkindly, it would undoubtedly have given 
the mimic unbounded satisfaction to cover him 
with ridicule. But to imitate the man who 
had used him with such tender kindness, for the 
purpose of ministering to the laugh of an un- 
thinking rabble, was beyond his power — his 
feelings would not permit him — he was com- 
pletely overcome by the commiseration of the 
doctor. 

The following incident, for which I am 
indebted to Col. Stone's admirable work, the 
Life of Brant,^ most clearlv shows how irresist- 
ibly the law of kindness unnerves the arm of 
revenge. After the fall of General Burgoyne, 
the tories became highly exasperated with 
General Schuyler for the very important part 
which he had taken in defeating the British 
army, and they determined to murder him. 
" For this purpose the tories corrupted a white 
man, who had been patronised by the General, 
and who was even then in his employment, to 
do the foul deed; and also one of the friendly 
Indians, whose clan had for years been in the 
habit of halting upon his premises in Saratoga, 
during the fishing season, at Fish Creek, which 
ran through his farm, and in which immense 
quantities of fish were then taken. To effect 
their object, the two assassins took their station 



♦Vnl. T^pn. 290. 2Q ' 



60 lav; of kindness. 

under a covert, in a valley about half a mile 
from the General's premises, and by which they 
had previously ascertained he was shortly to 
pass. They soon descried his approach on 
horseback. As he advanced, they took delib 
erate aim ; when, with a sudden movement, the 
Indian struck up his associate's gun, with the 
exclamation — ' I cannot kill him ; I have eaten 
his bread too often ! ' " 

An intelligent old lady, now residing in Au- 
burn, and with whom the author is well 
acquainted, vividly remembers many of the 
events which transpired in the Mohawk valley 
during the revolution ; especially those connect- 
ed wim trie destruction of Cherry Valley. Pre- 
vious to the war, her father resided on one of 
the banks of the Susquehannah, and was familiar 
with Erant, the celebrated Indian Chief, who 
frequently visited his house on the most kind 
and friendly terms. After the breaking out of 
the war, she relates, that the family fled to 
Cherry Valley for safety, and resided within two 
miles of the fort. At the time of the attack, 
Brant was repeatedly told that the whole family 
might easily be made prisoners — but his uniform 
reply was, " I do not want that family '." Every 
member of it escaped. Was it not the kindness 
of that family to Brant, which saved them from 
captivity and death ? 



THE- DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 6* 

A merchant of London, having a dispute 
with a Quaker, concerning a business account, 
became so enraged that he was determined* 
notwithstanding the persuasions of the Quaker, 
to institute a law-suit. Still desirous of amica- 
bly settling the matter, the Quaker called at the 
house of the merchant, and inquired of the ser- 
vant for his master. The merchant heard the 
inquiry, and cried out, "Tell that rascal lam not 
at home?' 1 The Quaker mildly said to him, 
"Well, friend, may God put thee in a better 
mind." The merchant was subdued by the 
kindness of the reply; and, after careful consid- 
eration, became convinced that he was wrong. 
He sent for the Quaker, and after making a 
humble apology, he said, " How were you able 
to bear my abuse with so much patience ? " 
" Friend," replied the Quaker, " I will tell thee. 
I was naturally as hot and violent as thou art. 
But I knew that to indulge my temper was sin- 
ful, and also very foolish. I observed that men 
in a passion always spoke very loud ; and I 
thought if I could control my voice, I should 
keep down my passions. I therefore made it a 
rule never to let it rise above a certain key ; and 
by a careful observance of this rule, I have, with 
the blessing of God, entirely mastered my natu- 
ral temper."^ 

* See Alcott's Young Man's Guide, pp. 95, 96. 
6 



"*2 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

The following fact proves that kindness will 
disarm obstinate children of their stubbornness. 
h is selected from an article on the " Manage- 
ment of Disobedient Children," which appeared 
in the Common School Journal. " At a Com- 
mon School Convention in Hampden county, 
we heard Rev. Dr. Cooley relate an anecdote 
strikingly illustrative of this principle. He said 
that, many years ago, a young man went into a 
district to keep school, and before he had been 
there a week, many persons came to see him, 
and kindly told him that there was one boy in 
the school whom it would be necessary to whip 
every day ; leading him to infer that such was 
the custom of the school, and that the inference 
of injustice towards the boy would be drawn 
whenever he should escape, not when he should 
suffer. The teacher saw the affair in a differ- 
ent light. He treated the boy with signal kind- 
ness and attention. At first this novel course 
seemed to bewilder him. He could not divine 
its meaning. But when the persevering kind- 
ness of the teacher begot a kindred sentiment 
of kindness in the pupil, his very nature seemed 
transformed. Old impulses died. A new crea- 
tion of. motives supplied their place. Never was 
there a more diligent, obedient and successful 
pupil. Now, said the reverend gentleman, in 
concluding his narrative — that boy is the Chief 



THE DISARMING FORCE OF KINDNESS. 63 

Justice of a neighboring state. The relator of 
this story — though he modestly kept back the 
fact — was himself the actor. If the Romans 
justly bestowed a civic crown upon a soldier, 
who had saved the life of a fellow-soldier in 
battle, what honors are too great for a teacher 
who has thus rescued a child from ruin?" 

In the light of these facts, every person must 
perceive the efficacy and power of the divide 
principle, " overcome evil with good" — and must 
admit that, as God has given it to us, and 
the Saviour made it the leading precept of his 
system, as well as the guide of his holy life, bo 
we should not only write it with indelible re- 
membrance upon our hearts, but we should also 
act according to its dictates and direction. 
Towards all who come within the reach of our 
influence, it should be exercised. If used right- 
ly, it will be a key which will open the hearts 
of all around us, giving us a place in their affec- 
tions. It will disarm anger of its power, hatred 
of its sting, enmity of its opposition, and sar- 
casm of its malice. It will make the commun- 
ion of husband and wife more tender — it will 
secure the obedience of children — it will make 
the ties of friendship strong — it will turn enmity 
into benevolent feeling — it will minister to the 
widow and orphan in the pitiless storms of 
winter — and it will look to the comfort of tha 



64 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

dumb beasts who serve us, saving them from 
cruelty and insuring them good treatment. All 
this it will do, if practised. And need it be 
said, that it is the duty of every person to be 
guided by the Christian law, " overcome evil 
v.'ith good ?" 






CHAPTER V 



KINDNESS AND INSANITY. 



•'Such is the power of mighty love.' 7 — Drydew. 

"Mightier far 
Than strength of nerve, or sinew, or the sway 
Of magic potent over sun and star, 
Is love ;; — Wordsworth. 



There is still another scene in human life 
where the law of kindness is producing the 
most extraordinary results — results which are 
contrary to all former experience. I allude to 
those unfortunate beings whose light of reason 
oecomes quenched in madness ; and the mode 
by which they are now generally governed. It 
has hitherto been universally believed, that 
insane persons must be governed by violence, 
and that such treatment is the only manner by 
which they can be managed. Hence, in the 
past history of insanity, we find it one account 
of chains, rags, filth and harshness — while the 
violent and refractory have been subjected to 
severe corporeal punishment, in order to subdue 
them. So thai those poor, afflicted persons, 



66 LAW 01 KINDNESS. 

whose mental house was in disorder, not only 
endured the wo of the utter blasting of reason, 
but were visited with cruelty and unkindness. 

But now, such views rarely exist. It is seen 
and admitted, not only that harshness and vio- 
lence aggravate the complaint of the insane, but 
lhat it is both necessary and efficacious to cast 
the oil of kindness upon the boisterous waters 
of insanity, and that soothing manners, and 
mild, interesting objects, gain the attention of 
the poor victims, and render the chances of 
recovery more certain and complete. Hence, 
at the present day, in most, and I do not know 
but that in all, of the hospitals for the insane, 
the kindest mode of government is pursued, and 
the whole discipline adopted is entirely the 
spirit of the law, " overcome evil with good." 
And over the gate of the institution where the 
most success in curing insane persons is mani- 
fested, there ought always to be written, " Kind- 
ness reigns here." But though kindness is, or 
soon will be, the universal rule of action in 
reference to all maniacs, yet there is an instance 
on record, which may even be called a bold and 
daring exhibition of its power; or at least, an 
instance in which most people would have hes- 
'tated, and even refused to adopt it ; and one, 
jo, where we ohould have expected the princi- 
ple to utterly and entirely fail. There is a Lu~ 



KINDNESS AND INSANITY. 67 

italic Asylum for paupers, in Hanwell, England. 
This asylum was formerly conducted on the old 
principle of violence, confinement, chains, strait- 
jackets, whips, and threats, until Dr. Ellis and 
his wife took charge of the establishment. 
They went into it with the broadest benevo- 
lence — their only governing power was " good 
sense and kindness ;" for these were the soul of 
their system. They determined to visit every 
lunatic with leniency and liberty. Though 
such an experiment endangered their lives, yet 
they opened every door of the building, and 
gave its inmates free access to every part of the 
asylum, treating them " as much as possible as 
though they were sane." The result is enno- 
bling ; after the pursuance of such a course for 
twenty years, no accident has happened from it. 
Miss Martineau, who visited, the asylum, says : 
" I have lately been backwards and forwards at 
the Hanwell Asylum for the reception of the 
pauper lunatics of the County of Middlesex 
On entering the gate, I met a patient going to 
his garden-work, with his tools in his hands % 
and passed three others breaking clods with 
their forks, and keeping near each other, for the 
sake of being sociable. Further on, were three 
women rolling the grass in company ; one of 
whom — a merry creature, who clapped her 
hands at the sight of visitors — had been chained 



6& LAW Or K12WNESS. 

to her bed for seven years before she was 
brought hither, but is likely to give little further 
trouble, henceforth, than that of finding her 
enough to do. Further on, is another, in a 
quieter state of content, always calling to mind 
the strawberries and cream Mrs. Ellis set before 
the inmates on the lawn last year, and persuad 
ing herself that the strawberries could not grow, 
nor the garden get on without her, and fiddle- 
faddling in the sunshine to her own satisfaction, 
and that of her guardians. This woman had 
been in a strait-waist coat for ten years before she 
had been sent to Hanwell. There is another 
place where the greater number of them go with 
equal alacrity ; to the Chapel, where they may 
be seen, on a Sunday evening, decked out in 
what they consider their best, and equalling any 
other congregation whatever in the decorum of 
their deportment. Where are the chains, the 
straw, and the darkness ? Where are the 
howls, and the yells, without which the place 
cannot be supposed a mad-house? There is not 
a chain in the house, nor any intention that 
there ever shall bej and those who might, in a 
moment, be provoked to howl and yell, are 
lying quietly in bed, talking to themselves, as 
there is no one else present to talk to." # 

•Miscellanies by H Martini au, Vol. L, pp. 231, 23i. 



KINDNESS AND INSANITY. x 69 

Again, she says : — " I saw the worst patients 
ji the establishment, and conversed with them, 
anl was far more delighted than surprised to 
see the effect of companionship on those who 
might be supposed the most likely to irritate 
each other. Some are always in a better state 
when their companions are in a worse ; and the 
sight of wo has evidently a softening effect upon 
them. One poor creature, in a paroxysm of 
misery, could not be passed by; and while I 
was speaking to her as she sat, two of the most 
violent patients in the ward joined me, and the 
one wiped away the scalding tears of the bound 
sufferer, while the other told me how ' genteel 
an education' she had had, and how it grieved 
them all to see her there. Why should it be 
supposed that the human heart ceases its yearn- 
ings whenever confusion is introduced among 
the workings of the brain ? And what is so 
likely to restore order, as allowing their natural 
play to the affections which can never be at 
rest ? For those who cannot visit Hanwell, it 
may be enough to know, that no accident has 
happened among Dr. Ellis's many hundred pa- 
tients, during the twenty years that he has been 
their guardian ; bat there has been a far higher 
satisfaction in witnessing and feeling the evi- 
dent security which prevails in the establish- 
ment, where the inmates are more like wbimsi- 



70 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

cal children, manageable by steadiness, than 
wretched maniacs, controllable only by force. 
1 Oh, do let me out ! Do let me go to my 
dinner!' wailed one in her chamber, who had 
been sent there because she was not ■ well 
enough ' for society, in the morning. The 
dinner-bell had made her wish herself back 
again among her companions. * Let me out, 
and I will be quiet and gentle.' 'Will you?* 
was the only answer, when the door was thrown 
open. In an instant she dispersed her tears, 
composed her face, and walked away like a 
chidden child. The talk of these paupers often 
abounds in oaths when they first enter ; but the 
orderly spirit of the society soon banishes them. 
4 1 cannot hear those words,' Mrs. Ellis says ; c I 
will hear anything that you have to say in a 
reasonable manner. I am in no hurry. I will 
sit down: now let me hear.' No oaths can 
follow an invitation like this, and the habit of 
using them is soon broken."^ 

When an individual is cured, and his mental 
house is put in order, he leaves the asylum with 
the most grateful recollections ; for so great is- 
the attention and kindness there practised, that 
lie feels when he is uncomfortable, that he can 
return and find a home under the care of his 
old friends. The "parting blessing" to the 

♦Miscellanies by H. Martineau. Vol. L, pp. 243, 244. 



KINDNESS AND INSANITY. 71 

cured patient, when going to the busy scenes 
of life accompanied with the affectionate smile 
of Mrs. Ellis, and her kind invitation to return 
"home" whenever they are in difficulty, are the 
attractions which make the establishment so 
desirable to them. " A painter, who had long 
experienced the kindness of Dr. and Mrs. Ellis, 
was grieved to leave them. Some time after 
he had returned to his business in the world, he 
had a typhus fever ; and when he was recover- 
ing, his first desire was to get back into his old 
quarters. ' I will go up to the Asylum,' said 
he ; * I am sure they will give me a nursing till 
I get strong.' And so they did." Could any- 
thing be more delightful than such kindness, or 
more refreshing to the mind ? Or could persons 
exhibit a more magnanimous and Christian 
spirit, than Dr. and Mrs. Ellis, in devoting their 
whole time to the welfare and comfort of insane 
paupers? Pure must have been the feelings 
and motives which actuated them — holy must 
have oeen their thoughts when dwelling upon 
the results of their labors. Those results are 
extraordinary. For not only do their kind- 
ness and judicious management firnuy win the 
love and gratitude of the insane, but they have 
rendered chains entirely useless, so that, though 
in 1834 they had five hundred and sixty-six 
patients., there were only ten whose arms it was 



72 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

necessary even to gently confine. And while 
in many other institutions for the insane, there 
are heard howlings, screeches, the rattling of 
chains, and the groans of human wo, yet here 
all is peace, freedom, and comparative enjoy- 
ment. And what is more extraordinary still, is, 
that, under their management, ninety out of 
every hundred patients are cured, and again 
blessed with reason. 

Another most noble illustration of the law of 
kindness as a power to subdue and soften 
insanity, is found in a scene which occurred in 
the Bedlam or Mad House of Paris. The ac- 
count of it is extracted from a letter read at the 
Academy of Sciences, by a son of the celebratec 
Pinei, who was, as I suppose from the account 
keeper or head overseer in the Bicetre. 

M Towards the end of 1792, Pinel, after hav 
mg many times urged the government to allow 
him to unchain the maniacs of the Bicetre, but 
in vain, went himself to the authorities, and with 
much earnestness and warmth, advocated the 
removal of this monstrous abuse. Couthon, a 
member of the Commune, gave way to M. 
PinePs arguments, and agreed to meet him at 
the Bicetre. Couthon then interrogated those 
who were chained ; but the abuse he received, 
and the confused sounds of cries, vociferations, 
and clanking of chains, in the filthy an I damp 



KINDNESS AND INSANITY. 73 

cells, made him recoil from PinePs proposition. 
l You may do what you will with them,' said 
he, * but I fear you will become their victim. ' 
Pine! instantly commenced his undertaking. 
There were about fifty whom he considered 
might, without danger to the others, be unchain 
ed ; and he began by releasing twelve, with the 
sole precaution of having previously prepared 
the same number of strong waistcoats, with long 
sleeves, which could be tied behind the back if 
necessary. 

" The first man on whom the experiment was 
to be tried, was an English captain, whose his- 
tory no one knew, as he had been in chains forty 
years. He was thought to be one of the most 
furious among them. His keepers approached 
him with caution, as he had, in a fit of fury, 
killed one of them on the spot, with a blow from 
his manacles. He was chained more rigor- 
ously than any of the others. Pinel entered 
his cell unattended, and calmly said, • Captain, 
I will order your chains to be taken off, and give 
you liberty to walk in the court, if you will pro- 
mise me to behave well, and injure no one.' 

* Yes, I promise you,' said the maniac, * but you 
are laughing at me — you are all too much 
afraid of me.' ' I have six men,' said Pinel 

* ready to enforce my commands, if necessary. 
Believe me, then * ay word, I will give you 

7 



74 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

your liberty, if you will put on this waistcoat. 5 
He submitted to this willingly, without a word. 
His chains were removed, and the keepers re- 
tired, leaving the door open. He raised himself 
many times from his seat, but fell back again 
on it ; for he had been in a sitting posture so 
long, that he had lost the use of his legs. In a 
quarter of an hour, he succeeded in maintaining 
his balance, and, with tottering steps, came to 
the door of his dark cell. His first look was at 
the sky, and he cried out enthusiastically, 'How 
beautiful ! ' During the rest of the day he was 
constantly in motion, walking up and down the 
staircases, and uttering short exclamations of 
delight. In the evening he returned of his own 
accord into his cell, where a better bed than he 
had been accustomed to, had been prepared for 
him, and he slept tranquilly. During the two 
succeeding years which he spent in the Bicetre 
he had no return of his previous paroxysms, but 
even rendered himself useful, by exercising a 
kind of authority over the insane patients, whom 
he ruled in his own fashion. 

V The next unfortunate being whom Pine! 
visited, was a soldier of the French Guards, 
whose only fault was drunkenness. When once 
he lost his self-command by drink, he became 
quarrelsome and violent, and the more danger- 
ous from his great bodily strength. From his 



KINDNESS AxND INSANITY. 75 

frequent excesses, he had been discharged from 
his corps, and he speedily dissipated his scanty 
means. Disgrace and misery so depressed him, 
that he became insane ; in his paroxysms, he 
believed himself a general, and fought those 
who would not acknowledge his rank. After a 
furious struggle of this sort, he was brought to 
the Bicetre in a state of great excitement. He 
had now been chained for ten years, and with 
greater care than the others, from his having 
frequently broken his chains with his hands 
only. Once, when he broke loose, he defied all 
his keepers to enter his cell until they had each 
passed under his legs ; and he compelled eight 
men to obey his strange command. Pinel, in 
his previous visits to him, regarded him as a 
man of original good nature, but under excite- 
ment incessantly kept up by cruel treatment; and 
he had promised speedily to ameliorate his con- 
dition, which promise alone had made him more 
calm. Now he announced to him that he 
should be chained no longer. And to prove 
that he had confidence m him, and believed him 
to be a man capable of better things, he called 
upon him to assist in releasing those others who 
had not reason like himself; and promised, if 
he conducted himself well, to take him into his 
own service. The change was sudden and 
complete. No sooner was he liberated, than he 



76 LAW OF KINDNESS, 

became attentive, following with his eye every 
motion of Pinel, and executing his orders with 
much address and promptness ; he spoke kindly 
and reasonably to the other patients, and during 
the rest of his life, was entirely devoted, to his 
deliverer. And * I can never hear without emo- 
tion,' says Pinel's son, 'the name of this man, 
who, some years after this occurrence, shared 
with me the games of my childhood, and to 
whom I shall feel always attached ' 

" In the next cell were three Prussian sol- 
diers, ivho had been in chains for many years, 
but on what account no one knew. They were, 
in general, calm and inoffensive, becoming ani- 
mated only when conversing together in their 
own language, which was unintelligible to 
others. They were allowed the only consola- 
tion of which they appeared sensible — to live 
together. The preparations taken to release 
them, alarmed them, as they imagined the keep- 
ers had come to inflict new severities ; and they 
opposed them violently, when removing their 
irons. When released, they were not willing 
to leave their prison, and remained in their 
habitual posture. Either grief or loss of intel- 
lect, rendered them indifferent to liberty. 

" Near them was an old priest, who was pos- 
sessed with the idea that he was Christ. His 
appearance indicated the vanity of his belief; 



KINDNESS AND INSANITY. 7? 

he was grave and solemn, his smile soft, and at 
the same time severe, repelling all familiarity ; 
his hair was long, and hung on each side of his 
face, which was pale, intelligent, and resigned. 
On his being once taunted with a question, that 
'if he was Christ, he could break his chains,' 
he solemnly replied, 'Frustra tentaris Qominum 
tuum. 1 His whole life was a romance of reli- 
gious excitement. He undertook, on foot, pil- 
grimages to Cologne and Rome, and made a 
voyage to America for the purpose of converting 
the Indians : his dominant idea became changed 
into actual mania, and on his return to 
France, he announced himself as the Saviour. 
He was taken by the police before the arch- 
bishop of Paris, by whose orders he was con- 
fined in the Bicetre, as either impious or insane. 
His hands and feet were loaded with heavy 
chains, and during twelve years he bore with 
exemplary patience martyrdom and constant sar- 
casms. Pinel did not attempt to reason with 
him, but ordered him to be unchained in silence, 
directing, at the same time, that every one 
should imitate the old man's reserve, and never 
speak to him. This order was rigorously ob- 
served, and 'produced on the patient a more de- 
cided effect than either chains or the dungeon; 
he became humiliated by this unusuaJ isolation, 
and, after hesitating a long time, gradually in- 
7* 



?8 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

troduced himself to the society of the other pa- 
tients. From this time, his notions became 
more just and sensible, and in less than a year 
he acknowledged the absurdity of his previous 
prepossession, and was dismissed from the 
Bicetre. 

" In the course of a few days, Pinel released 
fifty-tk~ee maniacs from their chains ; among' 
them were men of all conditions and countries , 
workmen, merchants, soldiers r lawyers, etc. 
The result was beyond his hopes. Tranquillity 
and harmony succeeded to tumult and disorder ; 
and the whole discipline was marked with a 
regularity and kindness, which had the most 
favorable effect on the insane themselves, ren- 
dering even the most furious more tractable." =* 

To these cases, we might add many more 
selected from the lunatic institutions of our 
own country, especially those at Charlestown 
and Worcester, Mass. But the instances al- 
ready presented are sufficient for my purpose. 
In them the mightiness of the law of kindness 
is strikingly apparent. It had not to deal with 
the wise, the reasonable, and the Christianized 
— those who understood its divine origin, and 
felt its requirements. But it came in contact 
with the insane — those whose mental light had 

* I a.m indebted ior this extract to one of the reports 
■ ^the "Boston Prison Discipline Society. 



KINDNESS AND INSANITY. 79 

been quenched in the boisterous waters of mad- 
ness, and the star of whose reason had set in 
darkness; those who could not appreciate the 
influences and tendencies of kindness ; those 
who had been confined and chained for a num- 
ber of years — who had been rendered fierce by 
ill-treatment, and whose insanity had been 
aggravated by violence. And what was the 
result of the operations of this law ? It made 
the stormy maniac gentle as a child ; it hushed 
piercing screeches into softness ; it changed vio- 
lent opposition into obedience ; it gave compar- 
ative happiness to those whose previous days of 
insanity were not relieved by a single smile of 
pleasure. And how did it effect this ? It reared 
no chilly dungeon, gloomy with filth and damp 
straw; it threw no chains upon the limbs of 
those who came under its charge ; it uttered no 
threats ; it wielded no lash. It cast the oil of 
gentleness upon the raging waves of violence ; 
it wove its web of silk around the bitter and 
blighted soul; it threw its light into mental 
darkness ; and it knocked gently for admittance 
into the fleshly house which was deprived of its 
lamp of reason. And, lo ! not only did insanity 
bow to its holy influence, but in almost every 
instance, it succeeded in re-arranging the dis- 
turbed brain, and in replacing the light of reason 
in its socket to fit and prepare its subject once 



80 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

more for the varied duties of huma.i life. Oh 
if aught is wanting to convince the skeptical of 
the power of kindness, it is found here I For if 
that law will subdue the maniac, calm down the 
raging storm of insanity, and render the poor 
victim of dethroned reason as mild and obedi- 
ent as a child, it certainly will have a powerful 
influence over those who are sane, whatever 
may be their situation. If Deity has so consti- 
tuted his creatures, that violent madness will 
bow before the law of kindness, Ave may well 
believe, that in reference to sane men, it is far 
the best to obey the direction of his inspired 
servant, " If thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if 
he thirst, give him drink ; for, in so doing, thou 
shalt heap coals of fire on his head," illustrated, 
as it is, by the conduct of the Savior, whc for 
his enemies prayed, " Father, forgive them ; for 
they know not what they do." 



CHAPTER VI. 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 



" The secret of the success of the Prison Discipline 
Society, is its use of the great principle of the Gospel — 
love to the guilty." — Prison Discipline Report. 

There is yet another department of human 
life, in which the law of kindness is acquiring 
extensive and powerful influence. I have refer- 
ence to criminals — those victims of vice who 
break the laws of society, and consequently 
endure the penalties attached to those laws. 
In times past, criminals have been visited with 
constant severity, and, in multitudes of instances 
with positive cruelty. And at the present day, 
it is not only the fact in many prisons, that pris- 
oners, in order to subdue them, are subjected 
to vindictive and frequent corporeal punish- 
ments, but multitudes of people still cherish the 
erroneous notion, that prisoners cannot be con- 
trolled in any other manner than by unrelenting 
severity. The annals of criminal legislation too 
truly prove that this severity has been faithfully 
administered To examine the neglect, the 



82 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

filth, the stripes, the revenge, and the vitiating 
influences, to which criminals have been com- 
pelled to submit, even in countries which boast 
of their civilization, makes the soul thrill with 
horror Legislators and public opinion have 
been entirely, and in many instances now are 
strangely wrong in this respect. If an individ- 
ual so acts that the law cannot grasp him with, 
its iron hand, and he dresses well as a votary of 
fashion, he too often is so much countenanced, 
that he is admitted to gay society and the smiles 
of many of the influential, though he may plun- 
der the widow and the orphan, and riot in 
seduction and debauchery. But let a man com- 
mit the smallest crime in the eye of criminal 
law — let him pass the ordeal of public trial and 
conviction — let him wear the striped dress of a 
convict — and straitway the mark of Cain is on 
his brow; and in the wretched prison to which 
he is consigned, and the stripes and suffering to 
which he is a slave, people forget that he is still 
a man, with feelings that might become active 
in virtue, if excited by the voice of kindness. 
Wlw cares for him 2 The past answers, none, 
with the exception of here and there a philan- 
thropist, whose voice has warned legislators of 
the revenge and cruelty they were inflicting on 
those who should be raised up from their degra- 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. S3 

dation, instead of being crushed deeper into an 
infamy which destroys all hope of reform. 

From the multitude of facts, but a few will be 
selected to show the unsurpassed wretchedness 
which has hitherto been the lot of criminals. 
In the Memoirs of Howard is the following 
statement : — The prison for the county of Corn- 
wall, was, in fact, but a room, or passage, twen- 
ty-three feet and a half, by seven and a half, 
with only one small window in it : opposite to 
that window there were, however, three dun- 
geons, or cages, about six and a half feet deep ; 
one nine feet long; another about eight; the 
third not ^\e ; the last for ivomen. They were 
all, as we may naturally suppose, very offensive. 
No chimney ; no drains ; no water ; damp earth 
floors; and no infirmary."^ Can it be won- 
dered at, that in such a hole as this, unfit even 
for wild beasts, every prisoner but one was sick 
with the jail-fever? And yet this loathsome 
place was a fair sample of the prisons and jails 
in England and the continent of Europe. 

Nor was the condition of convicts, formerly 
in our own country, any better than in Europe 
and England. The prisons, not excepting that 
which existed in the philanthropic city of Phil- 
adelphia, were of the most wretched and com- 
fortless character — and into them crowds cf 

* Memoirs of Howard, p. 77. 



84 LAW OF KINDS ESS. 

persons were huddled, from the murderer to the 
miserable and perishing debtor. There, the 
hardened villain taught the most flagrant forms 
of crime to the young novice in sin — there, every 
nameable vice was unblu shingly practised, and 
in the presence of females too, for both sexes 
were mingled together — there, were heard the 
clanking of chains, and the sound of the lash, 
accompanied by imprecations and curses — and 
there, scores were swept into eternity by dis- 
temper generated in filth and crowded apart- 
ments, without a friend to compassionate them 
or a voice to speak to them in mercy ; while the 
oaths of their companions were their requiem, 
and an ignominious death their end. Can it 
be a subject of astonishment, that such treatment 
of criminals should increase the crime which it 
was expected to destroy ? — that convicts, like 
the serpent struggling to bite the man who 
crushes him, should be excited by a deadly hate 
against the community who thus cruelly abused 
them ? — that their feelings should become frozen, 
and their souls filled with the desperation of 
revenge ? That such is the tendency of this 
unchristian revenge is demonstrated by the fol- 
lowing instance, which we quote from an admi- 
rable article on Prison Discipline : — 

" As an illustration of the nature and tenden 
cies of the former, and to too great a degree the 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 85 

present system of prison discipline, we would 
mention a case, which occurred only a few years 
since, in one of the New England states. The 
voucher for its accuracy, it is true, is the veracity 
of the sufferer himself; but the naturalness of 
the whole narrative is such, that we have never 
doubted for a moment of its essential authen- 
ticity. 

The young marh to whom we refer was an 
orphan, left in mere boyhood to the care of an 
uncle, who taught him his own trade, that of a 
shoemaker. The uncle, however, absconded in 
debt, while our informant was still a youth, and 
he apprenticed himself to another person of the 
same occupation. The master was poor, and 
the apprentice, of course, still poorer ; the former 
failed, and was, we believe, seal: to jail: and 
the latter, almost destitute of clothes, was again 
turned out, without a friend, into the street. 
His appearance was so squalid, that no respec- 
table mechanic would employ him, and he wan- 
dered about the city for several days, cold and 
hungry, procuring barely enough to prolong 
existence, by doing little errands on a wharf. 

In this condition, to cover his nakedness, he 
stole an old coat out of an entry. In one of the 
pockets, there was, unfortunately, a pocket-book, 
containing a considerable sum of money. This 
discovery alarmed the poor boy. Tc return it 
S 



86 LAW 0? KINDNESS. 

would have been to confess the robbery. To 
keep it was to render apprehension almost cer- 
tain. While deliberating with himself what he 
should do, he was arrested, immediately con- 
victed, and sentenced to six months' imprison- 
ment in a common jail. Here he found himself 
consigned to the same apartment with three 
pirates, one of whom was afterwards executed, 
and the other two doubtless deserved execution. 
These wretches spent their time in instilling 
into the mind of this boy every sentiment of 
hatred against society. They taught him how 
to steal, and assured him that the pleasantest 
life he could choose was a life of dishonesty and 
robbery. They assured him that he ought to 
make society pay for its cruelty to him ; that 
occasions for successful theft were of every day's 
occurrence ; and that he would become a gen- 
tleman more readily than in any other manner. 
The poor child was too easily persuaded. He 
entered the prison, honest in principle. He 
left it, determined upon being a villain. For 
weeks he was prowling about the city in search 
of some opportunity of theft; but he found these 
much less frequent than he had been led to sup- 
pose. He obtained, by doing odd jobs, barely 
sufficient to purchase food ; and slept on cellar 
doors, or in any hiding-place which the streets 
afforded. Having been in jail, he dared not 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 87 

apply to any respectable mechanic for work, 
and, as the cold weather approached, his situa- 
tion became almost desperate. He was perfectly 
prepared to commit an offence which would send 
him to prison ; " for then," said he, " I should be 
certain of having a place to sleep in at night." 

In this state of mind he was met by an old 
house-breaker, who immediately engaged him 
to rob a store. The robbery was successfully 
accomplished, and the booty secured. A reward 
was offered for the detection of the thief. A 
compromise was effected between the owners of 
the property, the managing robber, and the po- 
lice officer : a large part of the stolen goods was 
returned, and the remainder shared between the 
old offender and an accomplice, while this young 
man, who had been merely a tool in the trans- 
action, was delivered over to justice. We need 
not add, that he was speedily convicted, and 
sentenced for a term of several years to confine- 
ment in the State-prison. 

Several of the first months of this confinement 
were passed in solitude. It was midwinter. 
The room to which he was consigned was un* 
glazed ; his bed was a bunk filled with straw, 
and his covering a single blanket. It happened, 
that, on several occasions, he awoke in the 
morning and found himself covered with snow 
from the open window. His food was insuf- 



88 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

ficient in quantity and poor in quality ; and his 
health soon began to decline. Frequently he 
was obliged to lie with his limhs folded together 
during the whole day and night, for the sake of 
husbanding the vital warmth, until, even after 
being taken out, he was for some time unable to 
stand upright. During this sad period, " my 
feelings," said he, " were continually vibrating 
between two extremes. Sometimes I felt my- 
self injured ; though I knew I had done wrong ; 
yet I was conscious that I did not deserve such 
protracted misery, and I could not help weeping 
over my situation. Then, again, I would feel 
that this was not manly, and I would brace my- 
self to bear it without flinching, determined, 
that, if I was ever set at liberty, the world should 
pay dearly for its treatment of me." These 
latter feelings gradually strengthened with time, 
and at the close of the term of solitary confine- 
ment had formed themselves into a habit. 

When this melancholy half year had elapsed, 
he was turned loose into unrestrained intercourse 
with men who had themselves undergone a 
similar training. He described the prison at 
large as a perfect pandemonium, where every 
evil passion of the human heart was cultivated 
to terrible luxuriance. " I do not believe," said 
he, " that there was a man there, who would 
have hesitated for a moment to commit murder, 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 89 

were it not from the fear of detection. I my- 
self have frequently been guilty of murder in 
my heart." The only feeling possessed by the 
convicts in common, was, hatred against society, 
and a determination to be avenged upon it, if 
ever they had again the opportunity. To ac- 
complish this purpose, they were willing at all 
times to combine together. Those who entered 
were always ready to make known to those 
about to go out, any peculiar facilities, with 
which they were acquainted, for depredation. 
They assisted each other in forming plans and 
in fabricating tools ; and thus, on several oc 
casions, it was commonly known in the prison, 
that a murder or robbery was to be perpetrated., 
some days before the occurrence took place. 
No one who knew of the existence of such de 
signs dared to reveal them ; for he was well as 
sured, that, in case it were found out, he would 
inevitably be assassinated by some of the des- 
peradoes by whom he was surrounded."^ 

Such, then, was the manner in which commu- 
nity treated its criminals, only a few years since 
— and such was the result of that treatment. 
By this cruelty, warm feelings and good dispo- 
sitions were hardened into revenge; the tyro 
in crime became an accomplished villain ; and 

* North American Review, Vol. 49, p. 12, and onward. 
8* 



90 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

being turned loose into the world, prepared for 
the foulest deeds, society reaped a terrible retri- 
bution, in the murders and robberies committed 
by these desperadoes, for its insane modes of 
penal punishment. And even if it be admitted 
that community was not aware of the effects of 
its criminal laws in their practical operation, 
still it would not be less true that the infliction 
of such savage penalties is pure REVENGE. 
And it is certain that most persons have hereto- 
fore believed that criminals could not be gov- 
erned, subdued, and reformed by KINDNESS. 
This, however, is a fatal mistake. For, in every 
instance in which kindness has been properly 
exhibited in governing criminals, it has not failed 
to produce a desirable result. And not only is 
the divine view that the law of overcoming evil 
with good is the noblest power which can be 
exerted in subduing criminals, but a large por- 
tion of the civilized world is assenting to the 
fact, that we should "love the enemies " of 
state as well as of individuals. That such a 
fact is the genial dew to fertilize the barren 
heart, the key to unlock the hidden feeling, the 
magnet to attract the love of the hardened soul, 
there are many touching incidents to prove , 
some of which will be introduced. 

During the Irish Rebellion, in 1798, Joseph 
Holt, one of the rebel generals, was taken by 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 91 

the government authority. In consequence of 
his goodness of character,^ which excited even 
the respect of those against whom he rebelled, 
he was saved from capital punishment, and was 
transported to New South Wales. After his 
arrival, he was employed as overseer on the 
estate of a Mr. Cox, and had forty-five convicts 
and twenty-five freemen under his guidance. 
These convicts met at his hands nothing but 
kindness and confidence, and the result is given 
in his memoirs, published in London, in the 
year 1838. 

" As to the convicts, there was a certain quan^ 
tity of work, which, by the government regula- 
tions, they must do in a given time ; and this 
may be given to them by the day, week, or 
month, as you pleased, and they must be paid a 
certain price for all the work they did beyond 
a certain quantity. If they were idle, and did 
not do the regulated quantity of work, it was 
only necessary to take them before a magistrate, 
and he would order them twenty-five lashes of 
the cat on their backs, for the first offence, fifty 
for the second, and so on : and if that would 

* The commutation of his sentence from death to 
transportation, was brought about by the kindness which 
Holt extended to a captive officer, who was about to be 
slain by the rebels ; Holt interfered, and saved his life. 
The influence which the officer possessed, enabled him 
to deliver Holt from a disgraceful execution. 



92 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

not do they were at last put into a jail-gang, 
and rr ade to work in irons from morning till 
night. 

" In order to keep them honest, I paid them 
fully and fairly for everything they did beyond 
their stipulated task, at the same time I paid 
the freemen ; and if I thought the rations not 
sufficient for their comfortable support, I issued 
to each man six pounds of wheat, fourteen of 
potatoes, and one of pork, in addition. By this 
means the men were well fed ; for the old saying 
is true — £ Hunger will break through stone 
walls ;' and it is all nonsense to rnake laios for 
starving men. When any article was stolen 
from me, I instantly paraded all hands, and told 
them that if it was not restored in a given time, 
I would stop all extra allowances and indul- 
gences : ' the thief,' said I, ' is a disgrace to the 
establishment, and all employed in it; let the 
honest men find him out and punish him among 
yourselves ; do not let it be said that the flog- 
ger ever polluted this place by his presence. 
You all know the advantages you enjoy above 
gangs on any other estate in the colony; do 
not, then, throw them away. Do not let me 
know who the thief is, but punish him by your 
own verdict.' I then dismissed them. 

" The transports would say among themselves, 
that what I had told them was all right. i We 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 93 

won't,' they would reason, * be punished because 
there happens to be an ungrateful thief among 
us.' They then called a jury, and entered into 
an investigation, and on all occasions succeeded 
in detecting and punishing the offender. I was 
by this line of conduct, secure from plunder ; 
and the disgusting operation of flaying a man 
alive, with a cat-o'-nine-tails, did not disgrace 
the farms under my superintendence. Mr. Cox 
said one day to me, ' Pray, Joseph, how is it that 
you never have to bring your men to punish- 
ment? You have more under you, I believe, 
than any man in the colony, and, to the surprise 
of all, you have never had one flogged, or indeed 
have made a complaint against any one; they 
look well, and appear contented, and even happy/ 
' Sir,' said I, ' I have studied human nature 
more than books. I had the management of 
many more men in my own country, and I was 
always rigidly just to them. I never oppressed 
them, or suffered them to cheat their employers 
or each other. They knew, if they did their 
duty, they would be well treated, and if not, 
sent to the right about. I folkjw the same 
course with the men here. I should think my- 
self very ill-qualified to act as your overseer, 
were I to have a man or two flogged every 
week. Besides the horrible inhumanity of the 
practice, the loss of a man's week or fortnight* 



94 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

work, will not be a trifle in a year, at twelve 
and sixpence per week ; for a man who gets the 
cat, is incapable of work till his back is well ; 
so, in prudence, as well as in Christian charity, 
it is best to treat our fellow-creatures like men, 
although they may be degraded to the state of 
convict slaves.' " 

Mr. Holt also gives an account of Colonel 
Collins, who was governor of the settlement at 
the Derwent river, in Van Dieman's Land, from 
1804 till his death in 1810 ; whose conduct fur- 
nishes a most admirable illustration of the influ- 
ence of kindness. " This gentleman had the 
good will, the good wishes, and the good word 
of every one in the settlement. His conduct 
was exemplary, and his disposition most humane. 
His treatment of the runaway convicts was con- 
ciliatory, and even kind. He would go into the 
forests among the natives to allow these poor 
creatures, the runaways, an opportunity of re- 
turning to their former condition ; and, half dead 
with cold and hunger, they would come and 
drop on their knees before him, imploring par- 
don for their behavior. ' Well,' he would say 
to them, ' now that you have lived in the bush, 
do you think the change you made was for the 
better? Are you sorry for what you have 
done?' * Yes, sir.' * And will you promise 
never to go away again?' 'Never, sir,' 4 Go 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 95 

to the storekeeper, then,' the benevolent Collins 
would say, ' and get a suit of slops and your 
week's ration, and then go to the overseer and 
attend your work. I give you my pardon ; but 
remember that I expect you will keep your 
promise to me.'" All this was genuine kind- 
ness ; and the result was peculiarly pleasing and 
excellent. " I have been assured," says Mr. 
Holt, " that there was less crime, and much feioer 
faults committed among the people, under Gov- 
ernor Collins, than in any other settlement ; 
which I think is a clear proof that mercy and 
humanity are the best policy."^ 

Another instance of the extraordinary influ- 
ence of interest in the welfare of, and kindness 
to prisoners, is found in the conduct of an 
English lady, Mrs. Tatnall, wife of the keeper 
of Warwick Gaol. At the age of twenty-four, 
and on the third of March, 1803, she was -mar- 
ried, and on the same day went to her hus- 
band's abode. But the wretchedness of the 
gaol, and the misery seen in it, made greater by 
contrast with the quiet home which she had 
left, so filled her with despair, that, on one 
occasion, when her husband was absent, she re- 
turned to her father's house — and it required all 
her husband's power of reason and solicitation 

* For these extracts, I am indebted to Chambers' Ed- 
inburg Journal, for June 16th, 1838. 



96 r,AW OF KINDNESS. 

to induce her to go back with him. After wit 
nessing the bad habits, the profanity, the wretch 
edness manifested by the prisoners, who were 
of all ages and sexes, the thought occurred to 
her, whether she might not be able to effect 
some degree of reformation at least, in the feel- 
ings, manners, and conduct of the convicts. 
This thought was immediately reduced to prac- 
tice, and for twenty-five years did this admirable 
woman persevere in it, surrounded by the bless- 
edness arising from actions which flowed from 
the purest spring of kindness. She commenced 
her labors by reading the Bible and prayers to 
the prisoners, until, after a time, she secured 
their attention and confidence. She then intro- 
duced the means of industry, so that the con- 
victs should not be left to the influence of idle- 
ness. And, in addition, after a long struggle 
with great difficulties, a school was opened, 
through her exertions, for the boys and girls, 
that they might be redeemed from the influence 
of ignorance, and consequently be better guarded 
against the seductions of vice. By this judi- 
cious kindness, Mrs. Tatnall obtained strong 
power over the affections of the convicts, espe- 
cially of the boys, and the girls, who became so 
regenerated from the depravity into which igno- 
rance and crime had thrown them, as to return 
a kindred response to the voice of her good 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 97 

•ness. As an example of the great regard and 
love which they cherished for their benefactress > 
the following affecting relation of the death of 
two of the boys, given in Mrs. Tatnall's own 
language, is full of meaning. 

" Two little boys, the one thirteen, the other 
fourteen years of age, were brought to the 
prison. Both were in the last stage of con- 
sumption, emaciated, and destitute of clothing. 
Neither had any remembrance of their parents ; 
they had been left destitute at too early an age 
to know who or what the beings were to whom 
they owed their birth, and had been in the habit 
of wandering about during the day, subsisting 
on precarious charity and theft. Their nights 
had been passed near a brick-kiln. I watched, 
I may say with a mother's care, the progress 
of the disease, and administered all the little 
comforts in my power to bestow. Such had 
been their extreme destitution, that it was with 
great difficulty they were made to believe that 
some sheets hanging at the fire, w r ere intended 
for their use. After their removal to the infir- 
mary, a few weeks terminated their lives. The 
night previous to the death of the first, he asked 
repeatedly how long it would be before the clock 
struck nine, (the hour at which I usually went 
to see them.) On entering the room, I per- 
ceived a marked alteration in his appearance. 
9 



98 law or KINDNESS. 

When I was seated by his bed, he put out his 
emaciated hands, wished to be raised, laid his 
head on my shoulder, looked at me with a smile 
of delight, then kissed me, and instantly expired. 
The other poor child departed in the same 
happy, composed manner, a few days after." * 

Thus did this admirable woman become, as it 
were, the kind mother of the degraded and de- 
praved. And by meeting them with tender 
affection, she aroused the long dormant and bet- 
ter feelings of their nature, called out the gener- 
ous capacities of their souls, while, at the same 
time, their bad habits and desires were repress- 
ed, and love for virtue excited and strengthened. 
Nor was this the entire result of her noble con- 
duct and its consequences upon convicts. She 
procured the establishment of an asylum for 
boys who became reformed, where they contin- 
ued until they could be put out to good places. 

She procured schools for the young convicts 
of both sexes. She effected a separation of the 
untried from the tried prisoners, of the young 
from the old, of the less guilty from the de- 
praved, and furnished them all with means of 
industry, that their thoughts might be drawn 
from sin to the benefits and pleasures of useful- 
ness. Yet all this was gradually effected by 
her piactice of the law of kindness ; for had she 

♦Penny Magazine, Vol. IV., p. 184. 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 99 

used harshness and blows, the convicts under 
her charge would have been hardened in their 
wickedness, and sullenly resisted every effort 
for their improvement. Well did she deserve 
the silver teapot and stand, which the magis- 
trates presented her, " in acknowledgement of 
her meritorious conduct to the persons in the 
gaol." And well is she worthy the prayers of 
the philanthropic and the blessings of the un- 
fortunate. 

There is another case to be exhibited, which 
must convince the most skeptical, that the law 
of kindness is almost omnipotent in subduing 
even violent convicts, and in producing refor- 
mation among them. In 1815 there were nearly 
three hundred women imprisoned in Newgate, 
London — some untried, some under sentence of 
death, some condemned to transportation — while 
all v/ere sent there for every form and stage of 
crime. Their condition was most deplorable — 
the darkest wickedness was practised among 
them — the pockets of visiters were robbed by 
them, and they were so violent, that even the 
governor of the prison was loath to go among 
them. Mrs. Fry, a benevolent lady of the de- 
nomination of Friends, on hearing of their con 
dition, was induced to examine their situation 
After this visit, when writing to a friend, she 
eaid, " All I tell thee is a faint picture of the 



100 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

reality ; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, the 
ferocious manners, and the abandoned wicked- 
ness which everything bespoke, are quite inde- 
scribable.' J In 1816, she succeeded in associat- 
ing with herself twelve ladies, eleven of them 
Friends, for the avowed purpose of reforming 
the degraded females of Newgate prison. In 
the execution of this ennobling object, they put 
aside all severity, and assumed the law of kind- 
ness, and with heaits overflowing with love for 
the sinful subjects of their care, they commenced 
the experiment. Of that experiment " it was 
predicted, and by many, too, whose wisdom and 
benevolence added weight to their opinions, that 
those who had set at defiance the law of the land, 
with all its terrors, would very speedily revolt 
from an authority which had nothing to enforce 
it, and nothing more to recommend it than its 
simplicity and gentleness.' 17 The result, how- 
ever, proved this prediction unfounded in every 
particular. 

In the short period of one month, under the 
admonitions and kindness of these ladies, in 
conjunction with the school of knowledge and 
industry which they established, a complete 
revolution was established in Newgate. So 
that when the Lord Mayor, the sheriffs, and 
several of the alderman of London, visited the 
prison, the attention, the cleanly dress and ap- 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 10 i 

pearance, the respect and obedience, as well as 
the propriety and decency of all the female con- 
victs, filled them with admiration and wonder at 
the beneficial effects which had been produced 
m so short a period. And when any of their 
number were selected to be transported to 
Botany Bay, instead of breaking everything 
inside of their prison, and marching off with 
every indication of a bold and reckless de- 
pravity, as w r as formerly the case, they now 
parted from their companions with decorum and 
tears, and with deep gratitude to the ladies who 
had watched over them. All these results were 
produced by mercy. " I found," says a visiter 
to Newgate, " that the ladies ruled by the law 
of kindness, written in their hearts and display- 
ed in their actions. They spoke to the prison- 
ers with affection and prudence. These had 
long been rejected by all reputable society. It 
was long since they had heard the voice of real 
compassion, or seen the example of real virtue. 
They had steeled their minds against the terrors 
of punishment, but they were melted at the 
warning voice of those who felt for their sor- 
rows, while they gently reproved their mis- 
deeds." 

The grand jury of London, after their visit to 
Newgate, in 1818, made a " report to the court 
at the Old Bailey." After enumerating the 
9* 



102 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

blessings produced by the actions of Mrs- Fry 
and her friends, the report says, " It the princi- 
ples which govern her regulations, were adopted 
towards the males as well as females, it would 
be the means of converting a prison into a school 
of reform; and instead of sending criminals back 
into the world hardened in vice d?id depravity, 
they would be repentant, and probably become 
useful members of society ."* In this case, we 
have a full exhibition of the law of "kindness. 
And the results produced, were not only unex- 
pected, but they prove that when Christ said, 
" Love your enemies," he uttered a precept 
divine in its nature, and holy in its influence, 
never failing, when rightly exercised, to subdue 
the hardest heart and to reform the most aban- 
doned sinner. Oh, how well might the words 
in reality be addressed to Mrs. Fry, which are 
put in the mouth of a depraved female, who, in 
Boz's " Oliver Twist," is represented as saying 
to a lovely girl, whose kindness had me.ted her 
into tears — " Oh, lady, lady," she said, clasping 
her hands passionately before her face, "if there 
were more like you, there would be fewer like 
me — there would — there would ! " 

There is an instance, however, in our own 
land, which, as it exhibits the efficacy of the law 

* These extracts are taken from a work entitled, 
"Noble Deeds of "Women" — Art. Benevolence. 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 103 

of kindness in reference to criminals, goes very 
far in proving that it should be exercised in 
every prison. This instance is manifested by 
Captain Pillsbury, who has charge of the 
Wethers field Prison, in Connecticut. Previous 
to the establishment of the prison in Wethers- 
field, the treatment of convicts in the Old New- 
gate prison, was most cruel, belonging only to 
an age of ignorance and barbarity. The rooms 
were filthy, whipping was frequent and severe, 
while many of the convicts were kept contin- 
ually in irons. This state of things was not 
only detrimental to industry — for the institution 
run the state in debt every year — but its effect 
upon the temper of the convicts was very inju- 
rious, producing in them a " deep-rooted and 
settled malignity." And there were so many 
recommitments to this and other prisons, of 
convicts who had been sentenced to it in the 
first instance, as to demonstrate that such treat- 
ment did not produce reformation. 5 ^ But when 
Captain Pillsbury took charge of the new prison 
in Wether sfield, and the convicts were re- 
moved to it from Newgate, he instituted a very 
different course of treatment. He was kind in 
every respect, yet inflexibly firm in the dis- 
charge of his duty. He substituted the law of 
kindness for severity. " He mingles authority 

* Third Report of Prison Discipline Society, p. 16^. 



104 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

and affection in his government and instruc- 
tions, so that the principles of obedience and 
affection flow almost spontaneously towards him 
from the hearts of the convicts." The conse- 
quences of such a course were immediate and 
obvious. The convicts were liberated from 
their irons, their respect and obedience to the 
agent were gained, and the institution began to 
pay for itself by its own labors. * The success of 
kindness, as practised by the agent, is nobly ex- 
hibited in a few particular instances detailed by 
Miss Martineau, in her work entitled, " Retro- 
spect of Western Travel." 

" The wonderfully successful friend of crimi- 
nals, Captain Pillsbury, of the Wethersfield 
prison, has worked on this principle, and owes 
his success to it. His moral power over the 
guilty is so remarkable, that prison-breakers 
who can be confined nowhere else, are sent to 
him to be charmed into staying their term out. 
I was told of his treatment of two such. One 
was a gigantic personage, the terror of the 
country, who had plunged deeper and deeper in 
2rime for seventeen years. Captain Pillsbury 
told him, when he came, that he hoped he would 
not repeat the attempts to escape which he had 
rp.ade elsewhere. ' It will be best,' said he 
1 that you and I should treat each other as well 

* Third Report of Prison Discipline Society, p. 166. 



KINDNESS AND CRIMfi. 105 

as we can. I will make you as comfortable as 
I possibly can, and shall be anxious to be your 
friend ; and I hope you will not get me into any 
difficulty on your account. There is a cell 
intended for solitary confinement, but we have 
never used it, and I should be sorry ever to 
have to turn the key upon anybody in it. 
You may range the place as freely as I do, if 
you will trust me as I shall trust you.' The 
man was sulky, and for weeks showed only very 
gradual symptoms of softening under the opera- 
tion of Captain Pillsbury's cheerful confidence. 
At length, information was given to the captain 
of this man's intention to break prison. The 
captain called him, and taxed him with it ; the 
man preserved a gloomy silence. He was told 
that it was now necessary for him to be locked 
up in the solitary cell, and desired to follow the 
captain, who went first, carrying a lamp in one 
hand and the key in the other. In the narrow- 
est part of the passage, the captain (who is a 
small, slight man,) turned round and looked in 
the face of the stout criminal. ' Now,' said he, 
* I ask you whether you have treated me as 1 
deserved ? I have done everything I could 
think of to make you comfortable ; I have trust- 
ed you, and you have never given me the least 
confidence in return, and have even planned to 
get me into difficulty. Is this kind ? And yet 



106 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

I cannot bear to lock you up. If I had the least 

sign that you cared for me' The man 

burst into tears. c Sir,' said he, * I have been a 
very devil these seventeen years ; but you treat 
me like a man.' 'Come, let us go back,' said 
the captain. The convict had the free range 
of the prison as before. From this hour he 
began to open his heart to the captain, and 
cheerfully fulfilled his whole term of imprison- 
ment, confiding to his friend, as they arose, all 
impulses to violate his trust, and facilities for 
doing so which he imagined he saw. 

" The other case was of a criminal of the 
same character, who went so far as to make the 
actual attempt to escape. He fell, and hurt his 
ankle very much. The captain had him 
brought in and laid on his bed, and the ankle 
attended to; every one being forbidden to speak 
a word of reproach to the sufferer. The man 
was sullen, and would not say whether the ban 
daging of his ankle gave him pain or not. 
This was in the night, and every one returned 
to bed when this was done. But the captak 
could not sleep. He was distressed at the at- 
tempt, and thought he could not have fully done 
his duty by any man who would make it. He 
was afraid the man was in great pain. He rose, 
threw on his gown, and went with a lamp to the 
cell. The prisoner's face was turned to the 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 107 

wall, and his eyes were closed, but the traces 
of suffering were not to be mistaken. The 
captain loosened and replaced the bandage, and 
went for his own pillow to rest the limb upon , 
the man neither speaking nor moving all the 
time. Just when he was shutting the door, the 
prisoner started up and called him back. * Stop 
sir. Was it all to see after my ankle that you 
have got up ? ' 

" ; Yes, it was. I could not sleep for think- 
ing of you. 1 

" ' And you never said a word of the way I 
have used you ! ' 

"'I do feel hurt with you, but I don't want 
to call you unkind while you are suffering as 
you are now.' 

" The man was in an agony of shame and 
grief. All he asked was to be trusted again 
when he should have recovered. He was free- 
ly trusted, and gave his generous friend no 
more anxiety on his behalf. 

" Captain Pillsbury is the gentleman who, on 
being told that a desperate prisoner had sworn 
to murder him, speedily sent for him to shave 
him, allowing no one to be present. He eyed 
the man, pointed to the razor, and desired him 
to shave him. The prisoner's hand trembled, 
but he went through it very well. When he 
had done, the captain said, ' I have been told 
you meant to murder me, but I thought I might 



108 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

trust you. * God bless you, Sir ! you may,' 
replied the regenerated man. Such is the 
power of faith in man." 

No individual can avoid the conclusion which 
flows from these facts, viz., that good will over- 
come evil. And it can be as little doubted, that 
the fact now to be named adds strength to this 
conclusion. When Major Goodell took charge 
of the State Prison at Auburn, N. Y., he was 
told that there was one particular convict, who 
was such a desperate villain, that he could not 
be kept in subjection except by the lash. The 
first time Major Goodell met this convict, was 
in the yard of the prison. He spoke to him 
kindly, inquired of his situation, where he came 
from, when he entered the prison, and whether 
he was comfortable. The major then told the 
convict what he had heard concerning the 
necessity of checking his iron and revengeful 
conduct by the lash — how he had been informed 
that there was no other method of keeping him 
m xwe. " Now," said the major, " I do not be- 
lies this. I believe that you can and will 
->bey the rules of the prison, without incurring 
ef vere whipping. I am placed over this prison 
to keep you at work, and prevent you from es- 
caping — to see that the punishment contem- 
plated by the laws for crime, is executed. But 
I also wish to be your friend — to make you just 
as comfortable as your situation will permit. 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 109 

In return, I expect that you will be a friend to 
me, by obeying the rules of the prison, and by 
performing your duty." All this, and much 
more, spoken in kind tone and manner, softened 
the feelings of the convict, so that he was soon 
in a perfect gush of tears. Nor was this all : 
from that day forward, it was not necessary to 
strike him a blow, for there was not a more 
faithful convict in the prison. 

In all these instances, we perceive the tri- 
umph of benevolence united with firmness. 
And we find it softening the indurated heart, 
melting feelings hardened into iron by crime, 
making the bold offender bow in gushing tears 
of sorrow, and sending better thoughts to the 
soul long steeped in iniquity. How touchingly 
the following incident adds proof to this posi- 
tion ! Previous to the destruction of the Wal- 
nut street prison, and before the convicts were 
removed to Moyamensing, the Editor^ of the 
United States Gazette was permitted to visit it, 
which he did in 183-5. The extract which we 
give, is taken from the account of his visit. 

" Beneath the eastern wing, projecting into 
the yard of the prison, is a long arched passage, 

*Mr, Joseph R. Chandler — a gentleman who, if we 
may judge from his writings, possesses as warm and 
philanthropic feelings, as his talents are evidently of a 
high order 

10 



\1 K LAW OF KINDNESS. 

dimly lighted with one or two lamps fastened to 
the masonry of the wall. Doorways, at the side 
of this long subterranean chamber, opened into 
dark arched cells, where no ray of light but by 
the door could find entrance, and where all that 
is imagined of the solitary and subterranean 
dungeon-holes of feudal castles might be fully 
realized. Strong, massy chains were fastened 
to the floor and the grating ; and the thick, iron- 
studded doors, now thrown down, showed that 
an attempt at escape must have been futile. No 
prisoner has occupied these horrible abodes for 
nearly forty years. The last prisoner had been 
thrust in for some crime out of the usual course, 
his situation not made known to the keeper, 
and he perished miserably, without being able 
to make his voice heard. What must have been 
the sensations of the poor wretch, thus to feel 
life passing away in the horrors of famine and 
darkness ! ! The upper rooms on Walnut street 
are, we believe, chiefly used for the sick, and so 
also with one or two in the rear. Beyond these, 
in the upper story, is a series of cells, wherein 
are confined several prisoners for crimes of va- 
rious degrees of atrocity. We passed to this 
place over a kind of bridge, and it seemed to us 
a ' bridge of sighs ;' heavy chains rattled at the 
doors of the corridors that passed between the 
raa^3 of cells, and numerous heavy bars were 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. Ill 

removed, and strong locks turned, before the 
iron doors rolled heavy upon their reluctant 
hinges. We could see, through the gratings, 
the miserable prisoner stretched out upon the 
floor of his narrow abode, little curious to as- 
certain what had caused the disturbance, cer- 
tain that it could not reach through the iron of 
his dungeon, or suspend the steady, galling 
operation of the deep and just vengeance of 
the law."^ 

11 We paused at the grating of a cell, and the 
gentleman who accompanied us, spoke to the 
inmate. The voice was that of kindness, and 
it was evident that the prisoner was used to 
that tone from the keeper. He stepped for- 
ward from the dark rear of the cell, and placed 
himself against the grated door. Ten long 
years had been passed in durance by this offen- 
der against our laws ; and a strong iron frame, 
that had stood up against war and the elements, 
was yielding as a consequence of inaction. A 
strong light from an open grate in the passage 

* " l Vengeance ? ' Are our laws indeed vengeful ? 
We fear they are — yes, even revengeful in some cases. 
Oh, <, udge of all the earth, may they soon become as thou 
requirest us to be — as thou art — benevolent, forgiving, 
kind — remembering mercy amid chastisement, and seek- 
ing the reformation of the suffered in all punishments ! " 
— Rev. A. B. Grosh of the Magazine and Advocate, 
Utica. 



112 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

where we stood, fell on the pallid features of 
the prisoner, and placed him in bold relief in 
the dark ground of his unlit cell. 

" The multitude in the yard and the work- 
shops were busy : they seemed little different 
from the inmates of an almshouse; their num- 
ber and movements prevented reflection ; but 
here was food for thought* Hope bad almost 
ceased with the man. Sixteen years of his sen- 
tence were yet unexpired, and there was 
scarcely a ground to expect that he would sur- 
vive that period in confinement. With this 
world thus receding, we questioned him of his 
hopes of that towards which he was hastening. 
His mind was clouded ; there was a lack of 
early favorable impressions, and he seemed to 
share in the common feelings of convicts, that 
his crime had not been more than that of men 
who had escaped with less punishment; and 
when we asked him of his sense of guilt towards 
Him who was yet to be his judge, the poor man 
confessed his offences, but so mingled that con- 
fession with comparisons of crime, that we 
feared he saw darkly the path of duty ; there 
was no complaint ; much humility, much sense 
of degradation distinguished his speech, and a 
deep sense of gratitude towards the keeper 
who accompanied us, was manifest in his man* 
ner and language. 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 113 

* Having answered the questions which he 
put to us on important subjects, with what little 
ability we had, and added the advice which 
mankind are more ready to give than to follow, 
we prepared to depart ; a slight flush came to 
the cheek of the prisoner, as he pressed his 
forehead against the bars of his cell ; and his 
hand, which long absence from labor and from 
light had blanched to the lustre of infancy, was 
thrust through the aperture, not boldly to seize 
ours, not meanly to solicit, but rather as if in 
the hope that accident might favor him with a 
contact. Man, leprous with crime, is human — 
and a warm touch of pity passes with electric 
swiftness to the heart. Tears, from that foun- 
tain that had long been deemed dried up, fell 
fast and heavy upon the dungeon floor. 

" The keeper had moved away from the grate, 
and w r e were about to follow, when the prisoner 
said, in a low voice, 

"' One word more, if you please. You seem 
to understand these things. Do the spirits of 
the departed ever come back to witness the ac- 
tions and situation of the living ? ■ 

"' Many people believe it,' we replie 1, * and 
the Scripture says that there is joy in heaven 
over a sinner that repenteth on earth- It may, 
therefore, be true.' 
10* 



114 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

" ' It may be,' said the man. ' My poor, "pool 
mother!!'" 

That fearful imprisonment could not touch 
him — but when the thought came rushing into 
his mind, that his mother witnessed his situa- 
tion, his degradation, imprisonment, and suffer* 
ings, his heart felt its power, and hr bowed be- 
fore the shrine of that mother's memory, who 
had watched over him in infancy, and with ma- 
ternal fondness sought many methods to secure 
his happiness and welfare. But, thou-gh fact 
might be piled upon fact, yet it could not be 
rendered more demonstrably true, that the law 
" overcome evil with good," is the only correct 
principle upon which to found all prison disci- 
pline intended to cure offenders, and to render 
them useful members of society. Still, notwith- 
standing Christianity, notwithstanding experi- 
ence and humanity, very many of even Ameri- 
can prisons carry out their internal regulations 
solely through fear of the whip. And if a pris- 
oner infringes a law governing his actions while 
in confinement, his person is seared with t he- 
bloody marks of the lash, every stroke of which, 
not only inflicts pain upon his body, but strikes 
degradation and infamy deeper into the soul, 
until the last hope of reformation is extinguished. 
Oh, with all our boasted light and civilization, 
in many things we grope in darkness which 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 115 

belongs to the thirteenth, rather than to the 
nineteenth century. For we give up the holy, 
governing power which Christianity puts into 
our hands, and consent to use a barbarism which 
is characteristic of an age of ignorance and cru- 
elty. 

There is an important reason why criminals 
should be treated with kindness while suffering 
the penalty of our offended laws, which is not 
often considered. The great majority of crim- 
inals are very ignorant, and consequently have 
comparatively feeble moral conceptions. There 
are multitudes of persons who are placed, from 
infancy, in circumstances beyond their control, 
and are in continual contact with crime, who 
commit sin under the influence of an infatuated 
ignorance, and are degraded because they never 
had the means of emerging from the moral 
darkness into which fate had thrown thern. As 
evidence of this position, let it be remembered, 
that though 1512 prisoners were confined in the 
New York State Prisons, at Auburn and Sing- 
Sing, in the year 1834, yet of that number only 
nineteen had received a superior education. And 
among the 20, 984 committed or held to bail in 
England and Wales for the year 1836, only 192 
had received a superior education. A large 
majority could neither read nor write, and 
nearly all the resi were very imperfectly edu- 



Ii6 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

cated. In the Report of the British and Foreign 
Scho, I Society, for 1S31, we are informed that 
out ot nearly 700 prisoners put on trial in four 
counties, upwards of two hundred and sixty 
were as ignorant as the savages of the desert — 
they could not read a single letter. Of the en- 
tire 700, only 150 could write, or even read 
w'th ease ; and nearly the whole number were 
totally ignorant with regard to the nature and 
obligations of true religion. In the reports of 
the society for 1832-3, it is affirmed, that " in 
September, 1831, out of fifty prisoners pat on 
trial at Bedford, only four could read. In Jan- 
uary, 1833, there were in the same prison be- 
tween fifty and sixty awaiting their trials, of 
whom not more than ten could read, and even 
some of these could not make out the sense of a 
sentence, though they knew their letters. At 
Wisbeach, in the Isle of Ely, out of nineteen 
prisoners put on trial, only six were able to read 
and write, and the capital offences were commit- 
ted by persons in a state of the most debasing ig- 
norance."^ When a jailer was describing his 
prisoners to Leigh Hunt, he termed them "poor, 
ignorant creatures." This phrase will describe 
almost every person convicted of crime — for it 
is u idoubtedly true, that the vast majority of 

* Dick's Mental Illumination, p. 338,. 



KINDNESS AND CRIME. 117 

thos-i who fall into crime, are chained by the 
most hopeless ignorance to their degraded lot in 
life. Now, if these persons had been kindly 
cherished in infancy, and had received a good 
education, perchance among their number might 
have been found the statesman, the philosopher, 
the patriot, the philanthropist, and the Christian, 
while all might have been useful members of 
community. But, by neglect in youth, by ig- 
norance, by constant companionship with all the 
vices of low life, and oftentimes by the pressure 
of circumstances, multitudes become criminals. 
Such men are truly unfortunate, and they should 
be governed by kindness, and an exertion made 
to exalt their minds, until they can rise above 
sin, and disdain its chains. And it is my thor- 
ough conviction, sustained negatively by every 
instance of cruelty, and affirmatively by every 
instance of kindness, that the inmates of all 
prisons should be fully and constantly ruled in 
the most enlarged and pure spirit of the divine 

law, " OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD." 



CHAPTER VII. 

KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE. 

r God loves from whole to parts ; but human souj 
Must rise from individual to the whole. 
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, 
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ; 
The centre mov'd, a circle strait succeeds, 
Another still, and still another spreads ; 
Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace ; 
His country next — and next all human race : 
Wide and more wide, th J overflowings of the mind 
Take every creature in, of every kind : 
Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest, 
And heaven beholds its image in his breast/-' 

Pope's Essay on Man. 

We may take a step still lower in life, and 
with, safety affirm that the law of kindness will 
produce the most powerful and enduring obedi- 
ence from the enslaved son of Africa, towards 
the master who governs him. Though the Af- 
ricans have been degraded for ages, and bound 
down in ignorance — so much so, that many per- 
sons have imbibed the erroneous notion that they 
are incapable of attaining much advance in 
knowledge, even after a constant training of 



KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE. 119 

successive generations — yet surround them with 
kindness, and touch their feelings with love, and 
those feelings will as readily respond to its in* 
fluence, as the string of the harp will respond 
to the touch of the finger. The affecting instance 
which occurred on hoard the ill-fated steamboat 
Pulaski, where a slave, regardless of himself, 
was observed making attempts to preserve the 
life of his young master — this fact, together 
with many others which might be adduced, 
prove that kindness and humanity will touch the 
heart of the slave, and bind him more firmly to 
his master, than all the terror with which he can 
be surrounded. Miss Martineau, in her work 
entitled " Society in America," observes : 

" Where servants are treated upon a princi- 
ple of justice and kindness, they live on agreea- 
ble terms with their employers, often for many 
years. But even slaves may be made more 
useful as well as more agreeable companions, 
when treated in such a way as to call forth their 
better feelings. ' A kind-hearted gentleman m 
the South, finding that the laws of the state 
precluded his teaching his legacy of slaves ac- 
cording to the usual methods of education, be- 
thought himself at length of the moral training 
of task-work. It succeeded admirably. His 
slaves soon began to work as slaves are never, 
under any other arrangement, seen to work. 



120 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

Their day's task was finished by eleven o'clock. 
Next they began to help one another : the 
strong began to help the weak : first, husbands 
helped their wives : then parents helped their 
children: and at length the young began to 
hdp the old. Here was seen the awakening of 
natural affections which had lain in a dark 
sleep.' 

" A highly satisfactory experiment upon the 
v\ ill, judgment, and talents of a large body of 
slaves, was made, a few years ago, by a relative 
of Chief Justice Marshall. This gentleman and 
his lady had attached their negroes to them by 
a long course of judicious kindness. At length 
an estate, at some distance, was left to the gen- 
tleman, and he saw, with much regret, that it 
was his duty to leave the plantation .on which 
he was living. He could not bear the idea of 
turning over his people to the tender mercies or 
unproved judgment of a strange overseer. He 
called his negroes together, and told them the 
case, and asked whether they thought ihey 
could manage the estate themselves. If they 
were willing to undertake the task, they must 
choose an overseer from among themselves, pro- 
vide comfortably for their own wants, and remit 
him the surplus of the profits. The negroes 
were full of grief at losing the family, but wil- 
ling to try what they could do. They had an 



KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE. 121 

election for overseer, and chose the man their 
master would have pointed out — decidedly the 
strongest head on the estate. All being arrang- 
ed, the master left them, with a parting charge 
to keep their festivals and take their appointed 
holidays, as if he were present. After some 
time, he rode over to see how all went on, 
choosing a festival day, that he might meet them 
in their holiday gayety. He was surprised, on 
approaching, to hear no merriment ; and on en- 
tering the fields, he found his 'force' all hard at 
work. As they flocked around him, he inquired 
why they were not making holiday. They 
told him that the crop would suffer, in its pres- 
ent state, by the loss of a day ; and that they 
had therefore put off their holiday, which, how- 
ever, they meant to take by and by. Not many 
days after, an express arrived to inform the 
proprietor that there was an insurrection on his 
estate. He would not believe it; declared it 
impossible, as there was nobody to rise against; 
but the messenger, who had been sent by the 
neighboring gentlemen, was so confident of the 
facts, that the master galloped, with the utmost 
speed, to his plantation, arriving as night was 
coming on. As he rode in, a cry of joy arose 
from his negroes, who pressed around to shake 
hands with him. They were in their holiday 
clothes, and had been singing and dancing ; they 
11 






122 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

were only enjoying the deferred festival. The 
neighbors, hearing the noise on a quiet working- 
day, had jumped to the conclusion that it was an 
insurrection. 

" There is no catastrophe yet to this story. 
When the proprietor related it, he said that no 
trouble had arisen ; and that for some seasons, 
ever since this estate had been wholly in the 
hands of his negroes, it had been more produc- 
tive than it ever was while he managed it him- 
self." 

We are in the habit of supposing that Africa 
is the most degraded and ignorant country on 
the surface of the globe — and probably it is ; 
but there is an existing case which stands in the 
history of that unfortunate land like a glimmer- 
ing of heaven, and excellently exhibits the 
power of the law, " overcome evil with good." 
While Richard Lander was conducting an ex- 
pedition in Africa, in 1830, for the purpose of 
discovering the termination of the Niger, he 
speaks of a people scattered in every direction 
over that country, called Felatahs. A commu- 
nity of them reside in the town of Acba — and, 
unlike the rest of the Felatahs, are very quiet, 
take no part in war, are unambitious to gain 
territory, and carefully avoid all quarrels with 
their neighbors. The consequence is, that they 
are highly respected and esteemed by all around 



KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE. 123 

them, while they remain entirely unmolested by 
the most warlike and contentious of the be- 
nighted African people. And if kindness pro- 
duces such admirable results among the long 
debased and despised sons and daughters of 
Africa what may it not be expected to do 
among a more enlightened and Christianized 
people ? 

Every reader of African discovery, will re- 
member the touching incident of kindness 
which so strongly cheered Mungo Park, in an 
hour of gloom and starvation. It occurred 
while he was on his first journey of exploration 
in Africa. At Sego, the capital of Bambarra, 
he was ordered to a small village to pass the 
night, not having been permitted to enter the 
city. He was repulsed with great coldness, and 
no provisions having been furnished him, he 
was without hope of obtaining any, as every 
house was shut against him. While he was 
preparing to pass the night in a tree, an old 
woman coming from the field, compassionated 
his condition and took him to her hut, where 
she procured and prepared a fish for his supper. 
Her maidens, warmed by genuine tenderness, 
cheered their labors by a song, which Park soon 
found referred to himself. The strain, though 
in perfect simplicity, must have filled him with 
deep emotion. " The winds roared and the 



124 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

rains fell. The poor white man, faint and 
weary, came and sat under our tree. He has 
no mother to bring him milk, no wife to grind 
his corn." Chorus " Let us pity the white 
man, no mother has he." This instance of pure 
kindness adds proof to the touching testimony 
which the traveller, Ledyard, bears to the ten- 
derness of women to the afflicted. " I have ob- 
served," he says, " that women in all countries 
are civil, tender, obliging, and humane. I never 
addressed myself to them, in the language of 
decency and friendship, without receiving a de- 
cent and friendly answer. With man it has 
often been otherwise. In wandering over the 
barren plains of inhospitable Denmark; through 
honest Sweden and frozen Lapland ; rude and 
churlish Finland ; unprincipled Russia, and the 
wide-spread regions of the wandering Tartar; 
if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, the women 
have ever been friendly to me, and uniformly 
so : and to add to this virtue, (so worthy the ap- 
pellation of benevolence,) these actions have 
been performed in so free and kind a manner, 
that if I was dry, I drank the sweetest draught 
— and if hungry, ate the coarsest morsel with a 
double relish." 

To these instances, the many facts which 
occurred during the revolution in St. Domingo, 
could be added, to give power to these illustra. 



KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE. 126 

tions. But the facts are too numerous to be 
quoted here ; the principle developed in them, 
will answer my purpose. It is this — that slaves, 
however degraded, are susceptible of kindness, 
and rarely ever forget it, as was evinced in 
those cases in which slaves who had kind mas- 
ters and mistresses, used their exertions to save 
them from destruction, when nought but blood 
and ruin reigned, and in many instances suc- 
ceeded in their object; thus touchingly demon- 
strating, that if the corn of charity be cast even 
upon the soil of ignorant human nature, it will 
return to its sower a great reward after many 
days. 

There is an instance, however, of the effect 
of kindness upon a manumitted slave, which is 
so much to my purpose, that I must refer to it. 
Joseph Kachel lived in Barbadoes, and after his 
emancipation, kept a retail shop, in which his 
fairness and gentleness insured him much cus- 
tom. And his generous nature won him favors 
from some of the best people, which they would 
not often grant to their own color. In the great 
fire which happened in 1756, and which burned 
up a large share of the town, Joseph and his 
property escaped. His kindness was manifested 
by assisting his neighbors. Among the rest who 
suffered, was an individual from whom Joseph 
had in early life received many favors. This 
11* 



126 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

individual was ruined by the fire ; for his prop- 
erty, being invested in houses, was swept away. 
Joseph, commiserating the condition of his 
former benefactor determined to show his grati- 
tude by assisting him. " Joseph had his bond 
for sixty pounds sterling. ' Unfortunate man ! - 
said he, 'this debt shall never come against 
thee. I sincerely wish thou couldst settle all 
thy affairs as easily! May not the love of gain, 
especially when, by length of time, thy misfor- 
tune shall become familiar to me, return with 
too strong a current, and bear down my fellow- 
feeling before it? But for this I have a 
remedy. Never shalt thou apply for the assist- 
ance of any friend against my avarice.' 

" He arose, ordered a large account that the 
man had with him, to be drawn out ; and in a 
whim that might have called up a smile on the 
face of charity, filled his pipe, sat down again, 
twisted the bond, and lighted his pipe with it. 
While the account was drawing out, he contin- 
ued smoking, in a state of mind that a monarch 
might envy. When it was finished, he went in 
search of his friend, with the discharged ac- 
count, and the mutilated bond in his hand. On 
meeting him, he presented the papers to him 
with this address : * Sir, I am sensibly affected 
with your misfortunes ; the obligations I have 
received from your family, give me a relation 



KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE, 127 

k o every part of it. I know that your inability 
to pay what you owe, gives you more uneasi- 
ness than the loss of your own substance. That 
you may not be anxious on my account in par- 
ticular, accept of this discharge and the remains 
of your bond. I am overpaid in the satisfaction 
that I feel from having done my duty. I beg 
you to consider this only as a token of the hap- 
piness you will confer on me, whenever you put 
it in my power to do you a good office.' " 

With these facts before us, it is evident that 
the power to appreciate kindness exists in every 
class of human life, and will always wake into 
activity when kindness rouses it. I know that 
this power is, in multitudes, buried deep in ig- 
norance and cruelty. But, like the diamond 
from the mountain, it needs only the burnisher 
of intelligent affection to make it shine in all 
that native divinity whose eloquence proves that 
God pronounced man GOOD. But to make 
the fact still more demonstrative, we will give 
an instance, from whose teaching there is no 
escape. 

No nation on the face of the earth cherishes 
such bitter prejudice and proud contempt for 
other people, as the Chinese ; whose self-styled 
"celestial" inhabitants look with most inveter- 
ate dislike upon "barbarians," as they desig- 
nate foreigners. And so thoroughly are they 



128 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

indoctrinated with this prejudice and contempt, 
that their pride causes them to reject almost 
every effort which civilized people have made to 
give them information in religious and scientific 
truth ; while so carefully have they wrapped 
themselves up in that secrecy by which they 
have almost entirely prevented the hated " bar- 
barians " from examining their institutions, that 
their empire is nearly a sealed book to us. But 
there is one power, which, to a certain extent, 
has melted their iron prejudice, scattered their 
pride, and warmed their hearts with gratitude 
even to a " barbarian." That power is KIND- 
NESS ; and its operations are manifested in the 
instance now to be described. 

In 1835, Mr. Parker, an American mission- 
ary, founded an ophthalmic hospital in Canton — 
or rather, the intention was to devote it entirely 
to the treatment of eye diseases ; but as other 
diseases presented themselves, many of the pa- 
tients were received. The principle upon which 
the hospital was established, is kindness — to 
heal the afflicted without expense to them ; for 
Dr. Parker never received a fee, and when a 
present was made, it was put into the funds of 
the hospital. At first, applications for admit- 
tance were confined to the lower orders of 
people : but as the fame of the establishment 
gradually spread abroad, and the benevolence 



KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE. 129 

of its head was made known, the higher orders 
began to furnish patients from their ranks. And 
when Mr. Downing visited Dr. Parker, in 1836 
and 7, he ascertained that more than two thou- 
sand persons had been under treatment, most of 
whom had received help. Such conduct as 
this, rapidly melted the prejudices of the Chi- 
nese — their respect was becoming excited ; 
while those who were restored to health, were 
warmly attached to their benefactor. And if 
the hospital could be continued, there can be 
no doubt but that by it a door would be opened 
into China, through which Christian truth and 
the improvements of science might be introduc- 
ed among that people. And it would seem, 
from the success of kindness in this case, and 
the non-success of different experiments of 
another character, that the Chinese can be 
reached only through the law of love ; for even 
their iron stubbornness and pride cannot resist 
the fire of affection and goodness. 

One instance of the lively gratitude of a Chi- 
nese to Dr. Parker, for his great kindness, I 
cannot forbear mentioning. It is the case of a 
" private secretary to an officer of government," 
whose name is Masre-yay, and who had been 
made blind for many years, by the disorder 
termed cataract. An operation was performed 
Tapon his eyes by Dr. Parker, wi f h such com- 



130 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

plete success, that he was perfectly restored to 
sight. In the enthusiasm of his gratitude, he 
desired that he might have the doctor's por- 
trait, that he might " bow down before it every 
day." This was of course refused. He then, 
among other things, sent the present of a gilded 
fan, on which was inscribed a short biography 
of Dr. Parker, and a poem strongly expressive 
of his own grateful feelings. This poem was 
translated, and appeared in the Chinese Repos- 
itory — a few verses of which we give. On 
hearing of Dr. Parker, he says : — 

" I quick went forth ; this man I sought— this generous 

doctor found ; 
He gained my heart ; he 's good and kind j and high 

above the ground, 
He gave a room, to which he came at morn, at noon, at 

night ; 
Words would be vain, if I should try his kindness to 

recite. " 

After describing the operation, and the joy of 
his soul on first beholding his friends, he says : 

" With grateful heart and heaving breast — with feelings 

flowing o'er, 
I cried, <Oh, lead me quick to him who can the sight 

restore ! ' 
I tried to kneel ; but he forbade, and forcing me to rise, 
1 To mortal man bend not the knee j' then, pointing to 

the skies, 



KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE. 131 

u ' I am/ said he, l the workman's tool — another's is the 

hand ; 
Before His might, and in his sight, men feeble, helpless 

stand 3 
Go, virtue learn to cultivate, and never thou forget, 
That for some work of future good, thy life is spared 

thee yet.' 

" The token of my thanks he refused, and would not 

take 
Silver or gold — they seemed as dust j 't is but for vir 

tue's sake 
His works are done. His skill divine I ever shall adore, 
Nor lose remembrance of his name till life's last day is 

o'er."* 

Such were the expressions of gratitude drawn 
from a Chinese, by the kindness of Dr. Parker. 
And who shall venture to predict what glorious 
changes might not be wrought in China, if a 
systematic course of kindness was pursued in 
regard to its people? Perchance such conduct 
might be as efficient as sunshine and showers 
upon seed in the earth. At all events, it would 
be more Christ-like than to slaughter the Chi- 
nese because their emperor desires' to save hi 3 
subjects from intoxication by opium. 

* Penny Magazine, 1832, p. 262. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

KINDNESS ADMIRED BY ALL PEOPLE. 

u There is a golden chord of sympathy 
Fixed in the harp of every human soul, 
Which, by the breath of kindness, when 'tis swer* 
Wakes angel-melodies in savage hearts ; 
Inflicts sore chastisements for treasured wrong, 
And melts the ice of hate to streams of love ; 
Nor aught but kindness that fine chord can touch.* 

D. K. I*.*, 

In all the instances which have been adduced, 
the law of kindness has won for itself most 
noble triumphs, proving that there is a majesty 
and power in it which overcome all obstacles 
and, like fire upon an iron mass, soften the hard 
heart, take the wrinkles of revenge from the 
face of the soul, and throw broadly over it the 
cheerful smile of friendship. And we have no 
doubt that the secret of its power is, that man, 
notwithstanding his degradation, his wars and 
vices, possesses principles at the very foundation 
of his nature, which are as certainly influenced 
by a proper exhibition of kindness, as the needle 
of the compass is influenced by magnetism. 



KINDNESS ADMIRED BY ALL PEOPLE. 133 

There is good in man; and the instances are 
multitudinous which demonstrate the existence 
of that good. Take man in any situation, 
whether civilized or uncivilized, saint or sinner, 
exalted or degraded, surrounded by all the 
blessings of knowledge and comfort, or crushed 
in oppression, yet there is a chord in every 
soul, which, when swept by the finger of kind- 
ness, will vibrate with the music of holier and 
better feelings. A foreman in the New Y ork 
State Prison, in Auburn, informed me that he 
has known a dozen convicts at once affected to 
a perfect gush of tears by the mere sight of his 
little son, when he has taken him into the work- 
shop. By seeing that boy, perchance recollec- 
tion brought vividly to view what they once 
were in the days of their childhood — or their 
thoughts stole away to children of their own, 
whose society they had forfeited by crime, and 
who were thereby left without a father to guide 
and instruct them. The sleeping affection of 
their minds was aroused by that child, and in 
their falling tears of sorrow, was manifested the 
truth, that man, though hardened by crime, 
never entirely loses the divinity of good within 
him. In 1828, a paint shop in the Auburn 
Prison, took fire in the night. The shop was 
so nigh to the north wing, in which there were 
over five hundred convicts confined, that the nu- 
12 



134 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

merous villagers who rushed into the piison 
yard at the cry of fire, were highly excited with 
fear lest the prisoners should be burned. In 
the intensity of the excitement, the cry ran 
through the throng, "let out the 'prisoners — let 
out the prisoners ! " This was the voice of 
kindness, the call of humanity, developed in 
every soul by the great danger of their fellow- 
beings, for whom, though criminals, they had 
warm sympathy. And after the prisoners had 
been liberated, it gave the most lively satisfac- 
tion to every person : the danger was passed, 
the convicts were safe, and each one could 
breathe in freedom. This is only another proof 
that there is good in man, which, though it may 
rest in slumber, only needs the proper stimulus 
to develop it. 

Even in the lowest grades of intelligent life, 
this good may be discovered. An illustration 
of this position occurred during the life of Mat- 
thews, the comedian. 

" Matthews had a great dislike to carry 
money about with him, and this often exposed 
him to trifling annoyances. On one occasion, 
when in Wales, on arriving at Briton Ferry, on 
horseback, having ridden on in advance of his 
friends, he was obliged to wait their arrival, not 
having a shilling to pay the ferrymen. Just at 
this moment an Irish beggar, in the most miser- 



KINDNESS ADMIRED BY ALL PEOPLE. 135 

able plight, came up, and poured forth all that 
lamentable cant of alleged destitution, which it 
is their vocation to impress upon the tinder* 
hearted, and which seldom fails to draw forth 
sparks of compassion, My husband, however, 
assured the applicant that he had not even a far- 
thing to offer him. It was in vain ; the wretched, 
almost naked creature importuned him. At last 
he was told by him he supplicated, with some 
impatience at the tiresome and senseless perse- 
verance after this explanation, that so far from 
being able to bestow alms, he was himself at 
that moment in a situation to require assistance; 
actually, cold and damp as it was, (November,) 
compelled to remain at the water's edge till 
some friend came up who would frank him 
across the ferry. The man's quick, bright eye 
surveyed the speaker with some doubt, for a 
second ; but upon a reiteration of Mr. Matthew's 
assurance that he was detained against his will 
for want of a shilling, adding, that he was lame 
and unable to walk home from the other side of 
the ferry, or otherwise he might leave his horse 
behind as security — the beggar's face brightened 
up, and he exclaimed, i Then, your honor, I '11 
lend you the money ! ' ' What, you ! you, who 
have been telling me of your poverty and misery 
for want of money ! ' ' It 's all true,' eagerly 
interrupted the man ; ' it's all true ; I'm as poor 



136 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

as I said I was — there 's no lie in it. I 'm beg 
ging my way back to my country, where I 've 
friends ; and there 's a vessel ready, I 'm tould- 
that sails from Swansea to-night. I've got 
some money, but I want more to pay my pas- 
sage before I go, and I 'm starving myself for 
that raison; but is it for me to see another 
worse off than myself, and deny him relafe ? 
Your honor's lame ; now I Ve got my legs any 
how, and that 's a comfort, sure ! ' Then taking 
a dirty rag out of his pocket, and showing about 
two shillings' worth of coppers, he counted out 
twelve pence, and proffered them to Mr. Mat- 
thews, who, willing to put the man's sincerity 
of intention to the proof, held out his hand for 
the money, at the same time enquiring, ' How, 
if I borrow this, shall I be able to return it? 
My house is several miles on the other side of 
the ferry, and you say you are in haste to pro- 
ceed. I shall not be able to send a messenger 
back here for several hours, and you will then 
have sailed.' ' Oh, thin, may-be, when your 
honcr meets another of my poor distrist country- 
men, you '11 pay him the twelve pence; sure it 's 
the same in the end.' Mr. Matthews was 
affected at the poor fellow's evident sincerity ; 
but desirous to put the matter to the fullest test, 
he thanked his ragged benefactor, and wished 
him a safe journey back to his country. 



KINDNESS ADMIRED BY ALL PEOPLE. 137 

" The man took his leave with, 'Long life to 
your honor,' trudged off and was soon out ol 
sight. Matthews waited until his friends arriv- 
ed, then rode after him and repaid the borrowed 
money with interest ; but it was only on produc- 
ing good evidence of his prosperous condition, 
that the poor fellow could be prevailed on to 
take it."* 

The existence of the love of kindness in the 
soul, is nobly exhibited in an Arab tale, the sub- 
stance of which I obtained from De Lamartine's 
translation of " A Residence among the Arabs 
of the Great Desert." In the tribe of Nedgde, 
there was a mare, of great reputation for beauty 
and swiftness, which a member of another tribe, 
named Daher, vehemently desired to possess. 
Having failed to obtain her by offering all he 
was worth, he proceeded to effect his object by 
stratagem. He disguised himself like a lame 
beggar, and waited by the side of a road, know- 
ing that Nabee, the owner of the mare, would 
soon pass. As soon as Nabee appeared, Daher 
cried, in a feeble voice, "I am a poor stranger ; 
for three days I have been unable to stir from 
this to get food ; help me, and God will reward 
you." Nabee offered to carry him home ; but 
Daher said, " I am not able to rise ; I have not 
strength." Nabee then generously dismounted, 

* New York Albion, for 1839, p. 45. 
12* 



138 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

brought his mare near, and helped the beggar 
to mount her. The moment he was mounted, 
Daher touched her with his heel and started, 
saying, " It is I, Daher, who have got her, and 
am carrying her off." Nabee called upon him 
to stop, which Daher did. Nabee then said, 
11 Thou hast my mare ; since it pleases God. I 
wish thee success ; but I conjure thee, tell no 
one how thou hast obtained her." " Why not? 
said Daher. "Because some one really ill might 
remain without aid : you would be the cause why 
no one zvould perform an act of charity more, 
from the fear of being duped as I have been." 
This discriminating kindness subdued Daher — 
he immediately dismounted and returned the 
mare to Nabee, and when they parted, they 
parted sworn friends. This tale shows forth 
the power of kindness in a beautiful manner — 
and the delight with which the Arabs heard it 
told demonstrates that they can appreciate true 
generosity. 

These facts prove the existence of good in 
man, and that it never is fully destroyed iu the 
soul ; and the great Master of life, who knows 
all hearts, when he directed the Messiah to say, 
" love your enemies," knew the existence of 
that good; that it was a diamond hidden be- 
neath revengeful feelings ; a spring beneath the 
surface of the earth ; and that it only wanted 



KINDNESS ADMIRED BY ALL PEOPLE. 139 

the burnisher of truth to make the diamond 
shine, and the power of divine benevolence to 
cause the spring-water of love to gush in its 
fulness from the heart. The Lord of all wisdom 
would not have placed the principle of over- 
coming evil with good on the foremost page of 
Christianity, if that principle was not calculated 
to result in the thorough destruction of any 
moral evil it may be brought to oppose. In fact, 
let a signal act of revenge, a cold, unfeeling in- 
stance of retaliation, be known in our communi- 
ties, and it excites horror, and even the deepest 
tones of indignation. On the contrary, let a 
broad act of benevolence, a noble and dignified 
instance of the forgiveness of enemies be ex- 
hibited, and it is at once admired and com- 
mended in the warmest terms. So true it is, 
that the human heart dislikes the principle, 
" hate your enemies," and approves the practice 
of the law, " love your enemies. " Do not our 
souls fill with disapprobation, when we discover 
an individual raging in all the turbulence of 
anger, simply to gratify his revenge ? And 
when we behold an individual so far subduing 
his passions as to assist a starving foe, do not 
our minds swell with admiration, and do we not 
realize with double force the power of the pre- 
cept, " Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed 



140 LAW OF KINBNESS. 

him ; if he thirst, give him drink ; for in so 
doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head? " 
A few striking instances in the history of a 
single individual, Napoleon Bonaparte, will be 
adduced to illustrate the position just advanced, 
viz., that men hate cruel actions, and admire 
those which are kind in others. Who, for in- 
stance, approves his treatment of Toussaint 
L'Ouverture ? Toussaint was a pure African, 
and one of the leaders under whom the negroes 
arrayed themselves, after the whites had been 
expelled from the Island of St. Domingo. By 
his skill and political sagacity, he obtained the 
highest authority over the blacks. But, in 1802, 
he was compelled to submit to the army sent to 
St. Domingo, by Bonaparte, under General Le- 
clerc. The French, however, had not long re- 
gained possession of the colony, before Toussaint 
was accused, on the most trivial grounds, of en- 
couraging a conspiracy, and with his family 
was conveyed to France. Nothing certain is 
known of the exact mode of his death — though 
it has been ascertained that he was confined in 
a cold, dark dungeon, full of damps and chills, 
where the unhappy man must have soon met 
death in his living grave, if indeed poison did 
not shorten his days.'* This conduct of Napo- 

* Scott's Life of Napoleon, I nil. Ed. p. 284. 



KINDNESS ADMIRED BY ALL PEOPLE. * 141 

leon to the talented Toussaint, excited the in- 
dignation of the whole civilized world, and 
stands among the worst acts of the " child of 
destiny " — it is execrated by every individual 
who becomes acquainted with it. It gave in- 
spiration to the pitying soul of Wordsworth, 
when he said — 

H Toussaint ! the most unhappy man of men : — 
A T hether the all-cheering sun be free to shed 
His beams around thee, or thou rest thy head 

Pillowed in some dark dungeon's noisome den — 

O miserable chieftain ! where and when 
Wilt thou find patience i — Yet die not ; do thou 
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow ; 

Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, 

Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind 
Powers that will work for thee — Air, Earth, and Ski *s : 

There 's not a breathing of the common wind 
That will forget thee : thou hast g:*eat allies : 
Thy friends are Exultation, Agonies, 

And Love, and Man's unconquerable mind." 

Nor was this cruelty to Toussaint without its 
legitimate results : for the negroes, exasper- 
ated at the treachery used towards their chief- 
tain, attacked the French in every direction ; 
and they carried on the war with a cruelty 
which makes the blood run cold, and shocks 
even revenge itself. 

But if this act of Bonaparte to Toussaint is 



142 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

execrated, another act of his, under differed 
circumstances, excites the admiration of the 
heart. After the battle of Jena, in October, 
1806, in which the army and power of Prussia 
were so completely annihilated by the French, 
Napoleon obtained possession of a letter written 
by Prince Hatzfield, who, before its capture, 
was governor of Berlin, in which he communi- 
cated to Prince Hohenloe some of the motions 
of the French army. Napoleon appointed a 
military commission to try him, and it was evi- 
dent that his fate would be severe. Madame 
Hatzfield, not knowing that any charge had 
been preferred against her husband, threw her- 
self at the feet of Napoleon, and demanded jus- 
tice for him. The result of this interview is 
given in a letter addressed by Napoleon to the 
Empress Josephine; out of which the follow* 
ing is an extract : — " But at least thou wilt see 
I have been very good to one, who showed her- 
self a feeling, amiable woman — Madame Hatz- 
field. When I showed her her husband's letter, 
she replied to me, weeping bitterly, with heart- 
felt sensibility and naivete : '-Alas I it is but tuo 
surely his ivritingS When she read it, her ac- 
cent went to my soul — her situation distressed 
me. I said, ' Well, then, ma&ame, throw that 
letter into the fire ; I shall then no longer pos- 
sess the means of punishing your husband.' She 



KINDNESS ADMIRED BY ALL PEOPLE. 143 

burnt the letter, and was happy. Her husband 
is restored to tranquillity. Two hours later, 
and he would have been a lost man."^ In this 
instance we behold the exercise of kindness. 
And who does not admire it, and at once dis- 
cover that it excites admiration for Napoleon, and 
serves to soften the judgment which posterity 
heaps upon his memory for his cruel treatment 
of Toussaint ? 

There is an instance related of the Princess 
of Wales, mother of George the third, which 
will continue to excite the admiration of every 
feeling soul, so long as history shall record it. 
Being in the habit of reading the newspapers, 
she, in December, 1742, discovered the following 
advertisement in one of them: — ■" A man who 
has served his country bravely, is, by a peculiar 
circumstance of misfortune, reduced to the ex- 
tremest distress. He has a family too, who are 
deeply involved in his fate. This intelligence 
will be sufficient to those who can feel, and who 
can relieve. Such persons may be more par- 
ticularly informed of his past misfortune, and 
may be witnesses of his present, by calling at 

." Her benevolent feelings bemg 

3uched by this relation, the princess, with an 
endant lady, privately visited the designated 

* Scott's Life of Napoleon. Phil. Ed cf 7839, p. 336. 



I %4 LAW OF KINDNESS 

place, and found it the abode of wretchedness 
and want. A gentlemanly man sat by a mis* 
erable fire, holding a sick boy. On the comfort- 
less bed lay his suffering wife, whose arms en* 
folded an infant struggling with disease. The 
entire family exhibited the strongest marks of 
want and despair, and the room displayed the 
most abject poverty. On inquiring, the princess 
ascertained that he had been reduced to starva- 
tion by the following circumstances. He had 
been an ensign in a regiment, then in Germany. 
Having excited the envy of a parcel of coxcombs 
in the regiment, and having conscientiously 
refused a challenge sent him by an enemy, on 
a most frivolous subject, he was accused to his 
superior officers as a coward and a slanderer. 
By the influence of numbers, he was condemned 
/or that of which he was not guilty, and lost his 
commission. He returned to England to lay 
his case before the secretary of war ; but having 
no friend to intercede for him, he failed in his 
object. Sickness then prostrated his family, 
and, being without money, he was brought to 
great suffering. In a fit of despair, he caused 
the foregoing advertisement to be inserted in a 
dewspaper. 

The princess was touched by his distress. 
She gave him ten guineas for immediate ex- 
penses ; and by application to the right source, 



KINDNESS ADMIRED BY ALL PEOPLE. 145 

procured his restoration in the army. He went 
abroad to attend to his duty, leaving his family 
in the care of his benefactress, and by his merit 
and bravery, soon obtained a major's commis- 
sion.^ What person can read of such benevo- 
lent conduct as this, without a thrill of admira- 
tion for the generous woman who thus raised 
an excellent man from destruction ? 

In the multitudes of instances in which chil- 
dren, employed in the factories of England, are 
subjected to excessive labor, ill-treatment, pov- 
erty and starvation, there are exceptions which 
speak in loud terms of commendation to those 
engaged in them. Among these, is the case of 
Mr. John Wood, Jun., a stuff manufacturer, of 
Bradford, Yorkshire, who employs nearly six 
hundred girls in his manufactory. He is mind- 
ful of the well-being of those children who are 
under his charge. They have a portion of time 
allotted for recreation. In the working rooms, 
which are kept perfectly neat and clean, there 
are seats placed at regular intervals, so that 
when not at work, the children can rest them- 
selves. He has established a school on the 
premises, and by keeping more operatives than 
are actually necessary for his business, the chil 

♦Noble Deeds of Women, in Waldie's Library, Vol 
II. of 1835, p. 356. 

13 



r** 



145 LAW OF KINDNESS, 

dren are enabled to attend the school in suc- 
cessive bands. They are there taught to read, 
write, sew, and knit. He has them taught to 
sew and to knit, that when they settle in life, they 
may understand household duties. The chil- 
dren are required to appear in clean clothes 
twice a week. A medical man visits the man- 
ufactory once in each week, to inspect the 
health of the children, and to attend to the sick. 
Engaged in such a scheme of benevolence, 
could it be otherwise than said of him : — " The 
little work-people seemed quite delighted to see 
their employer ; their faces brightened up, and- 
their eyes sparkled as he came near and spoke 
to them ; indeed, he appeared to be more like a 
father among them, and an affectionate one too, 
than like a master." " In fact, all seemed glad 
to see him, as if it were felt and fully recognised 
that his was the grateful task to watch over and 
promote the general good, and that only one 
common interest existed between them. Happy 
is it for society, when the employer and the em- 
ployed have such a connexion of mutual good- 
will between them ; and most happy are those 
who can combine with their own gainful pursuits 
the gratification which always accompanies 
warm-hearted and enlightened benevolence."* 

1 Penny Magazine Vol. II , pp. 4-15, 446. 



KINDNESS ADMIRED BY Aik. PEOPLE. 147 

Not these instances only, but all others which 
are applicable to the subject, prove the fact that 
the world hates cruel actions and loves gener- 
ous deeds. Nor is it less true that the exhibi- 
tion of such high-souled and kind conduct is the 
surest mode of overcoming enmity and repress- 
ing revengeful passions. There could not be a 
better illustration of this truth, than the com- 
mon but expressive fable of the Wind and Sun. 
They were disputing — so runs the fable — one 
day, which possessed the most power. Unable 
to decide the question, they agreed to test it by 
seeing which could the most quickly divest a 
certain traveller of his cloak. The wind made 
the first trial. He called up his clouds and sent 
his cool airs abroad. The traveller, feeling 
chilly, brought his cloak more closely around 
him. The wind then drenched the traveller 
with rain, pelted him with hail, covered him with 
enow, and pinched him with cold ; but, though 
almost perishing, the traveller yielded not his 
cloak, but wrapped it more firmly about his 
body. So the wind gave up in despair. Then 
came the sun. He scattered the clouds by his 
glorious beams, and warmed the benumbed 
limbs of the traveller with his cheering influence. 
Gently and gradually he increased his rays, un- 
til the grasp of the traveller upon his cloak was 
loosed. The sun still added to his power and 



148 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

advanced his brilliancy, until the cloak was 
thrown off, and the traveller sat down upon it, 
panting with heat. So retaliation may try all 
it forces to disarm human passion of revenge- 
but it will fail. But let the sun of love fall upon 
it, and it will be melted into contrition and 
sorrow. 

In closing this department of the subject, let 
it be observed that one of the most ennobling 
characteristics of the law of kindness, is its uni- 
versality. It is not circumscribed in its appli- 
cation — it is not confined to a few people — nor 
is its exercise favorable to a part and injurious 
to the rest. Like the dews of heaven, the roam- 
ing atmosphere, or the flowing light of the sun, 
it is fitted for all people, and will as readily 
warm the frozen heart of the Laplander, in his 
eternal ice, with love divine, as it will cool the 
raging passions of the fevered son of the tropics. 
Parents amid their children, schoolmasters sur- 
rounded by their scholars, the governor, ruler, 
king, and emperor, with their subjects, the over- 
seer with his slaves, the head workman, with 
his laborers, all will find it a power which will 
procure them more obedience than any force 
they can use — obedience more lasting and sin- 
cere, from the fact that it springs from affection 
instead of fear. I know that passion may inter- 
vene, and render it difficult to practise the law 



KINDNESS ADMIRED BY ALL PEOPLE. 149 

of kindness; that temper flies, and the impulse 
of revenge says, " destroy ;" but over thesr we 
must throw a bridle, and learn to " overcome 
evil with good." There is not a nobler sight m 
the moral world, than that of an individual sub- 
duing his passions, repressing the desire to re- 
venge, and acting on the principle, " love your 
enemies." The case of Stephen, though sur- 
rounded by his enraged murderers, who hurled 
the stones of death at him, yet, in his magnanim- 
ity of purpose, praying that the sin of murder 
might not be laid to their charge, is infinitely 
more ennobling than Alexander amid his wealth, 
or Napoleon in all the pride of military conquest. 
13* 



CHAPTER IX 



NATIONAL KINDNESS, 



-True Religion 



Is always mild, propitious and humble ; 
Plays not the tyrant, plants no faith in blood j 
Nor bears destruction on her chariot wheels : 
But stoops to polish, succor and redress, 
And builds her grandeur on the public good." 

It is not often remembered that society, as 
composed of individuals, is frequently actuated 
by revenge, and that much of the evil which ex- 
ists in it, may be clearly traced to its neglect of 
the law of kindness. A community, or a nation, 
becomes unkind when it gives no heed to the 
education of the poor ; when it raises such walls 
of distinction as to discourage and shut out the 
humble in life from notice, however worthy and 
virtuous ; when it makes a god of riches and 
fashion, to frown upon even the industrious, and 
to set them aside like worthless weeds, because 
they cannot shine in silks and revel in luxury ; 
when it crushes the feeble person for the least 
deviation from the path of rectitude, chasing him 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 151 

or her to desperation with unrelenting severity; 
while, at the same time, it will receive with open 
arms the rich villain into its highest circles : 
when its laws are oppressive, cruel, and without 
a tendency to reform the criminal ; when its 
legislation becomes encumbered with volumes 
of useless laws, so enveloping justice with tech* 
nicalities, and forms, and multiplied modes of 
procedure, that if justice is obtained, in many 
cases the costs eat up the proceeds ; when the 
rich and influential practise such conduct as se- 
duces the poor and lowly into vice ; and when 
established custom sanctions sin in a variety of 
its forms, thus leading multitudes on to ruin ; — in 
all these, and in many other things, a nation or 
a community may be unkind and walk contrary 
to the Christian law, " overcome evil with good." 
What is it but the unkindness of community, 
which suffers an unnatural speculation to raise 
provisions above the price of labor, grinding the 
working classes in poverty and sorrow, and, 
through absolute want, driving many of them to 
beggary and theft ? What is it but the unkind- 
ness of community that takes from multitudes 
of the poorer people all hope of rising in pros- 
perity, and, by condemning them to perpetual 
drudgery, causes many of them, through mere 
despair, to become thieves and prostitutes ? 
What is it but the unkindness of community 



C2 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

hat, because an individual female has made one 
mis-step, she is driven deeper and deeper into 
the foulest dens of vice, even when exhibiting an 
earnest repentance and a strong desire to return 
to virtue ? What is it but the unkindness of 
community that winks and smiles at the wick- 
edness, vice, and dissipation of the rich knave, a 
known gambler, seducer and oppressor of the 
weak ; yet on whose arm females will lean in 
confidence at their parties, and whose money 
gets him notice, even when an individual in 
humble life, though rich in virtue and know- 
ledge, will be unnoticed by what are called the 
great? Oh, there is so much misery to be 
traced directly to the customs and fashions of 
life, that many a poor man may date his ruin 
from the door of society, by being pressed into 
vice by the follies and oppression of those who 
always owe to the 'poor a good example, 

I was much impressed with the following ex- 
tract from Mr. Ainsworth's work entitled " Jack 
Shepard." * A benevolent individual urged 
upon a woman, living in the lowest dregs of 
life, and whose husband had been hung for 
house-breaking, to give him her infant. She 

* A work, by the way, whose general tendency is un- 
questionably evil, especially upon the minds of youth. 
Even the good passages in it will not divest it of this 
tendency. 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 153 

refused ; and, when she saw that he was angry 
at her refusal, — " Don't be angry with me, 
sir," cried the widow, sobbing bitterly, " pray, 
don't. I know I am undeserving of your boun- 
ty ; but if I were to tell you what hardships I 
have undergone — to what frightful extremities 
I have been reduced — and to what infamy I 
have submitted, to earn a scanty subsistence for 
this child's sake — if you could feel what it is to 
stand alone in the world as I do, bereft of all 
who ever loved me, and shunned by all who have 
ever known me, except the worthless and the 
wretched — if you knew (and Heaven grant that 
you may be spared the knowledge !) how much 
affliction sharpens love, and how much more 
dear to me my child has become for every sac- 
rifice I have made for him — if you were told all 
this, you would, I am sure, pity rather than re- 
proach me, because I cannot at once consent to 
a separation which I feel would break my 
heart." — Many a female, like the one here rep- 
resented, has been plunged deeper and deeper 
j*. infamy, because society has had no smile to 
win the wanderer from sin, but rather has 
frowned her away from repentance. 

How vividly the following passage portrays 
some of the ruin caused by the modern arrange- 
ments of society ! It is in the same conversa- 
tion, between the same individuals, from which 



154 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

the foregoing extract was taken : — " ' Let me ad- 
vise you on no account, [said Wood,] to fly to 
strong waters for consolation, Joan. One nail 
drives out another, it's true; but the worst nail 
you can employ is a coffin nail. Gin Lane's 
the nearest road to the church-yard." 

w ' It may be ; but if it shortens the distance, 
and iightens the journey, I care not,' retorted 
the widow, who seemed by this reproach to be 
roused into sudden eloquence. £ To those who, 
like tne, have never been able to get out of the 
dark and dreary paths of life, the grave is in- 
deed a refuge, and the sooner they reach it the 
better. The spirit I drink may be poison — it 
may kill me — perhaps it is killing me : but so 
would hunger \ cold, misery — so would my own 
thoughts. I should have gone mad without it. 
Gin is the poor man's friend — his whole set-off 
against the rich man's luxury. It comforts him 
when he is most forlorn. It may be treacher- 
ous, it may lay up a store of fa ture wo ; but it 
ensures present happiness, and that is sufficient. 
When I have tiaversed the streets, a houseless 
wanderer, driven with curses from every door 
where I have solicited alms, and with blows 
from every gateway where I have sought shel- 
ter — when I have crept into some deserted 
building, and stretched my wearied limbs upon 
a bulk, in the vain hope of repose — or, worse 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 155 

than all, when, frenzied with want, I have yield- 
ed to horrible temptation, and earned a meal in 
the only way I could earn one — when I have 
felt, at times like these, my heart sink within 
me, I have drunk of this drink, and I have at 
once forgotten my cares, my poverty, my guilt. 
Old thoughts, old feelings, old faces, and old 
scenes have returned to me, and I have fancied 
myself happy — as happy as I am now.' And 
she burst into a wild, hysterical laugh. 

"'Poor creature!' ejaculated Wood. 'Do 
you call this frantic glee happiness?' 

" ' It 's all the happiness I have known fcr 
years,' returned the widow, becoming suddenly 
calm ; ' and it 's short-lived enough, as you per- 
ceive. I tell you what, Mr. Wood,' added she 
in a hollow voice and with a ghastly look, l gin 
may bring ruin; but as long as poverty, vice, 
and ill-usage exist, it will be drunk. ,'" 

How many poor creatures, frowned down by 
the world, driven from all chance of repentance, 
without one friendly voice to say as the Saviour 
said, " go, and sin no more," have reasoned as 
this woman reasoned, and gone to destruction 
while attempting to drown their guilt and sor- 
row in the bowl of intoxication ! It is in vain 
to disguise the fact, that the largest share of the 
squalor and filth, the poverty and intemperance, 
the prostitution and fraud, which exist in every 



156 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

community, may be fairly charged to the follies, 
unnatural rules, vicious fashions, and demoral- 
izing examples of society. Think of it and talk 
of it as we may, it is solemn truth that most of 
the poor and the wretched owe their degradation 
to that wicked state of society which consigns 
them to drudgery, and shuts them out from 
all hope of rising to better things, by making 
them "hewers of wood and drawers of water. " 
That there are many arrangements in society, 
which are not only unjust, but are of the most 
pernicious tendency, no person can doubt. Not 
the least among them is the unequal distribu- 
tion of punishment. What is meant by this 
statement, will be learned, as applied to the par- 
ticular instance given in the following extract : — 
" We read in a New York paper, that Oliver 
Major was sent to the city prison for thirty 
days, for stealing one boot: Cornelius Sullivan, 
to Blackwell's Island, for three months, for 
stealing three Guernsey frocks ; Joe Thompson, 
for sixty days, for stealing one ham. We sup- 
pose that the first was barefooted, the second 
barebacked, and the third hungry. In the same 
paper we read that the Newburyport Bank, in 
Massachusetts, had failed, with about 100,000 
dollars of immediate liabilities, and about 13,- 
000 dollars of immediate means; that its notes 
were offered at a discount of fifty per cent., with 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 157 

no buyers ; that one poor man, who had been 
saving money to pay his rent, had thirty dol- 
lars of its notes, for which he could not obtain 
more than six dollars ; that another poor and 
old man had just been paid ten dollars in its 
notes, which was his all; that many widows 
and orphans were holders of its notes ; and that 
one man connected with it, and who employs 
many hands, paid them in its notes on the very 
afternoon before its failure, in sums of from three 
dollars to fifteen dollars, to the amount of eight 
hundred dollars. Here are the beauties of the 
promise banking system ! Theft and robberies 
by wholesale ! 

"Now if either of these poor men, or of these 
hands, had stolen one boot, or one ham, what an 
outcry justice would have made, and how 
promptly she would have sent them to prison ! 
But when a bank director, who employs many 
hands whose daily labor is all their means of 
daily bread, deliberately swindles them with the 
notes of a bank which, he well knows, will ex- 
plode in a few hours through his own manage- 
ment, he is still allowed to strut through society, 
followed by no curses, excepting from the poor 
whom he has plundered, and greeted with the 
adulation of all who found respectability upon 
wealth."^ 

# Philadelphia Ledger. 
14 



15S LAW OF KINDNESS. 

Farther than this, the cruelty of society is 
manifested in those laws which have sanctioned 
imprisonment for debt. For can any person 
deem that state of society kind, which sanctioned 
the laws that tore the poor and honest debtor from 
his family, to place him in a hopeless imprison- 
ment, where, without the possibility of obtaining 
means to pay his debt, he was left to rot into his 
grave of despair, while his wife and children sunk 
into unpitying poverty, and perhaps to crimes 
that make the heart creep with horror ? Well 
did an English author represent a poor debtor 
in Fleet Prison answering a man who spoke to 
him of friends : — " Friends ! " interposed the 
man, in a voice which rattled in his throat ; [he 
was sick ;] " if I lay dead at the bottom of the 
deepest mine in the world, tight screwed down 
and soldered in my coffin — rotting in the dark 
and filthy ditch that drags its slime along be- 
neath the foundation of this prison — I could not 
be more forgotten or unheeded than I am here. 
I am a dead man — dead to society, without the 
pity they bestow on those whose souls have 
passed" away. " Friends to see me I My God ! 
I have sunk from the prime of life into old age 
in this place, and there is not one to raise his 
hand above my bed, when I lie dead upon it, 
and say, c it is a blessing he is gone.'" 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 159 

It is incredible, to persons entirely unac- 
quainted with the history of the imprisonment 
of debtors, what cruelties have been practised, 
and barbarous indignities have been heaped upon 
persons whose only crime was debt — cruelties 
and indignities which could not raise money, 
nor return aught to the creditor or to commu- 
nity, save the miserable reflection that revenge 
was glutted with suffering. Let any person 
read the Life of John Howard carefully, and 
any of the documents relating to the imprison- 
ment of debtors in our own country, and the 
conviction will not come slowly, that the tender 
mercies which have fallen upon them, are the 
most unchristian vengeance — dishonorable to 
the creditor, dishonorable to legislators, and 
cruel to its victims. I would by no means jus- 
tify the man who wrongs his creditor, by obtain- 
ing his property, and deliberately determining 
to swindle hirn out of it. Such a man should 
be punished in all the ways that tend to enforce 
restitution and check the evil in others. But of 
what utility can it be, to take a debtor, espe- 
cially one whose misfortunes render him unable 
to pay, and separate him from his family, whose 
very bread depends on his labor, shut him up m 
prison among criminals, to be contaminated by 
their vices, there to continue in idleness, with 
out ability to satisfy his creditor, while his wife 



160 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

and children endure the gripings of penury, and 
perhaps are driven to crime by stern necessity ? 
No other utility than to compel the payment of 
the debt with cruelty and suffering. 

I shall venture to give but one extract show- 
ing what imprisonment for debt has heretofore 
been, in a particular instance. It is in reference 
to the Walnut street prison, in Philadelphia, as 
it was in 1783. Alas ! of how many prisons it 
is a fair sample. " In this den of abomination 
were mingled, in one revolting mass of festering 
corruption, all the collected elements of conta- 
gion : all ages, colors, and sexes were forced into 
one horrid, loathsome community of depravity. 
Children, committed with their mothers, have 
first learned to lisp the strange accents of blas- 
phemy and execration. Young, pure, and mod- 
est females, committed for debt, have learned, 
from the hateful society of abandoned prostitutes, 
(whose resting-places on the floor they were 
compelled to share,) the insidious lessons of 
seduction. The young apprentice, in custody 
for some venial fault, the tyro in guilt, the un- 
fortunate debtor, the untried and sometimes 
guiltless pr'soners, the innocent witnesses de- 
tained for their evidence in court against those 
charged with crimes, were associated with the 
incorrigible felon, the loathsome victim of disease 
and vice, and the disgusting drunkard, (whose ^ 



VTIONAL KINDNESS. 161 

means of intoxication were unblu shingly fur- 
nished by the jailer !) Idleness, profligacy, and 
widely diffused contamination, were the inevita- 
ble results. The frantic yells of bacchanalian 
revelry — the horrid execrations and disgusting 
obscenities from the lips of profligacy — the fre- 
quent infliction of the lash — the clanking of fet- 
ters — the wild exclamation of the wretch, driven 
frantic by desperation — the ferocious cries of 
combatants — the groans of those wounded in 
the frequent frays, (a common pastime in the 
prison,) mingled with the unpitied moans of the 
sick, (lying unattended, and sometimes destitute 
of clothes and covering,) — the faint but imploring 
accents for sustenance by the miserable debtor, 
cut off from all means of self support, and aban- 
doned to his own resources, or to lingering starv- 
ation — and the continual, though unheeded, 
complaints of the miserable and destitute, formed 
the discordant sounds in the only public abode 
of misery in Philadelphia, where the voice of 
hope, of mercy, of religion, never entered."* 
And yet, into such a horrible den as this, many 
i person was thrust, for the crime of being poor, 
of being unable to pay his or her debts , there, 
not only to be deprived of the last hope of extri- 
cation, but to sink down into blasting vice and 

* North American Review, Vol. XLIX., pp. 7, 8. 

14* 



162 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

helpless want. Philanthropists, the prisoner's 
friends, have risen up and indignantly rebuked 
community for its cruelty on this subject ; and 
the time has come, when an honest man, for a 
little pittance, which he would soon pay if let 
alone, cannot be consigned to a prison, to have 
age prematurely creep upon him, and many long 
years of confinement to file down and sharpen 
his bones for the grave. Thank Godi the 
change has come, sweeping away the cruelty 
which hung over human legislation, and giving 
precious liberty to thousands, who otherwise 
would have become tenants of prisons, burthens 
to themselves and society, deprived of all pity, 
support, or consolation. 

Yet it appears that I am wrong in saying that 
the evil of imprisonment for debt has been en- 
tirely removed. The Editor of the Knicker- 
bocker, for January, 1841, while acknowledging 
the receipt of an article on " Imprisonment for 
Debt," among other remarks, says — " It is not 
long since a Revolutionary veteran was confined 
for a long period in Charlestovvn Jail, for the 
petty sum, if we remember rightly, of twenty 
dollars; and on the Fourth of July, was seen 
looking from the grated window of his prison at 
the celebration without ! Nobly has our corres- 
pondent, Whittier, with satirical knout, scourged 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 163 

those rulers who permitted such a spectacle on 
hallowed ground. 

•• What has this gray-haired prisoner done ? 
Has murder stained his hands with gore ? 
Not so ; his crime 's a fouler one : 

God made the old man poor ! 
For this he shares a felon's cell — 
The fittest earthly type of hell ! 
For this — the boon for which he poured 
His young blood on the invader's sword, 
And counted light the fearful cost — 
His blood-gained liberty is lost' 

And so, for such a place of rest, 
Old prisoner, poured thy blood as rain 

On Concord's field and Bunker's crest, 
And Saratoga's plain ? 

Look forth, thou man of many scars, 

Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars j 

It must be joy, in sooth, to see 

Yon monument upreared to thee , 

Piled granite and a prison cell — 

The land repays thy service well ! 

But when the patriot cannon jars 
That prison's cold and gloomy wall, 

And through its grates the stripes and stars 
Rise on the wind and fall — 

Think ye that prisoner's aged ear 

Rejoices in the general cheer ? 

Think ye his dim and fading eye 

Is kindled at your pageantry ? 

Sorrowing of soul and chained of limb, 

What is your carnival to him ? 



164 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

" Down with the law that binds him thus ! 

Unworthy freemen, let it find 
No refuge from the withering curse 

Of God and human kind ! 
Open the prisoner's living tomb, 
And usher from its brooding gloom 
The victim of your savage code, 
To the free sun and air of God ! 
Nor longer dare as crime to brand 
The chastening of the Almighty's hand." 

Another horrible instance of the cruelty of 
nations is manifested in the continuation of those 
laws to which the penalty of death is attached ; 
and by which so many innocent persons have 
been executed — " a case by no means," says Mr. 
Livingston, " of so rare occurrence as may be 
imagined." Is it not dreadful that there are 
laws, which, in their operation, can render no 
recompense to the victims they sacrifice, when 
it is discovered that those victims are innocent 
of the crimes for which they have been murder- 
ed? We might array hundreds of instances of 
this character, from the criminal jurisprudence 
of all civilized nations — but it is necessary to 
adduce only two in proof that this national cru- 
elty exists. These are extracted out of Mr. 
O'SulIivan's admirable and unanswerable report 
to the legislature of New York, on the abolition 
of capital punishment. 

" I myself," says Mr. O'Connel, in a speech at 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 165 

Exeter Hall, June, 1832, " defended three broth- 
ers of the name of Cremming, within the last 
ten years. They were indicted for murder. I 
sat at my window as they passed by, after sen- 
tence had been pronounced ; there was a large 
military guard taking them back to jail, posi- 
tively forbidden to allow any communication with 
the three unfortunate youths. But their mother 
was there, and she, armed in the strength of her 
affection, broke through the guard. I saw her 
clasp her eldest son, who was but twenty-two 
years of age — I saw her hang on her second, 
who was not twenty — I saw her faint when she 
clung to the neck of her youngest son, who was 
but eighteen — and 1 ask, what recompense could 
be made for such agony ? They were executed 
— and — they were innocent I "* 

" A very unhappy case," says Mr. O'Sullivan, 
' occurred within a few years, in which a citi- 
zen of this state, a young man of fine talents, 
character, and attainments, fell a victim to this 
fatal uncertainty of all human testimony. His 
name was Boynton, a brother of a clergyman of 
the same name, now a resident in Otsego coun- 
ty. He had been staying for a few weeks at a 
tavern on the Mississippi, some distance above 
New Orleans, in Louisiana. He had been much 
in company with a fellow-boarder, who was one 

* Report, p. 123 



1G6 LAW OF KINDNESS.- 

day found murdered on the bank of the river 
within a very short period after they had beer 
seen together very near to the spot where the 
body was discovered. The evidence presented 
by all the circumstances of the case was such 
that Boynton was convicted of the charge, not- 
withstanding the most earnest protestations of 
his innocence — protestations to which nobody 
attached the slightest weight. When placed 
upon the scaffold, he read a very able vindica- 
tion of himself, again protesting, in the name of 
his God, that innocence which man refused to 
believe. When informed that his time was 
come, he broke wildly from those by whom he 
was surrounded on the scaffold, and rushed in 
among the multitude, in the most piteous man- 
ner, crying for help, and repeating the assurance 
that he was innocent. He was soon again se- 
cured by the sheriff, dragged back to the scaf- 
fold, and, in the midst of his piercing shrieks 
and heart-rending cries, launched into eternity. 
Not many months after, the keeper of the tavern, 
on his death-bed, confessed himself guilty of the 
murder for which young Boynton hadbeenhung 
— having, to shield himself from conviction, di- 
rected the circumstances so as to procure the 
arrest and conviction of the latter." ^ 

Such cases are likely to continually occur, 

* Report, pp. 119, 120. 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 187 

from the fact, that testimony, however decided 
it may appear at the time, may be directed 
against persons entirely innocent of the crimes 
with which they may be charged. And there 
can be no doubt, that, first and last, scores of per- 
sons, who have died by the hand of the execu- 
tioner, and upon whose memory the brand of 
infamy now rests, have been guiltless of wrong. 
It makes the blood chill w T ith horror, to think 
that men have been arraigned, tried, convicted, 
and executed, when they were as free from 
crime as the judge who sentenced them. And 
it makes the soul faint, to remember that a jury, 
however strong the proof may seem, may con- 
vict innocent men, which conviction shall result 
in an ignominious death, and thus become the 
instruments of judicial murder under a barba- 
rous law whose operation precludes the least 
possible reparation to its victims, and whose 
spirit is REVENGE. 

But this is not the only point in which criminal 
legislation is cruel. For even in the cases of 
individuals who have been sent to prison for a 
term of years, and whose innocence has after- 
wards been proved, not the least remuneration 
for loss of time has been given, nor a single pro- 
vision has been established to remove the infamy 
attached to their names ; they are sent abroad 
with a stigma which their efforts cannot remove. 



168 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

I know a case, in which a man was sent to pri- 
son for the crime of forgery ; after remaining 
seven months in confinement, he was liberated 
because he was innocent. I know another, in 
which a man and his wife, (foreigners,) were 
sent to prison for receiving stolen goods. They 
remained over a year in confinement, and ther 
received their freedom because they too icere in- 
nocent. Did these persons receive even what 
they had earned by their labors as convicts ? 
Not one dollar ! Did they receive a document, 
from executive authority, which would prove to 
whoever they might show it, that they were 
guiltless ? They did not ! They received par- 
dons for crimes which they never committed — 
pardons which availed them nothing in regain- 
ing their former standing in society, inasmuch 
as real criminals who are pardoned, have the 
same. And thus society suffers the infamy to 
rest on them. If such individuals, through re- 
venge, should become thieves and robbers, the 
cause may be found in the cruel negligence of 
legislators. 

One great truth springs from every instance 
of cruelty practised by nations, viz., that reck- 
lessness of life and callousness to suffering, exist 
in proportion as the people of a nation are cruel, 
and that cruelty is sanctioned by the govern- 
ment of the nation. In the same ratio that a 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 169 

nation is conversant with carnage and scenes of 
destruction, in the same ratio will its members 
lose their sympathy for the distressed, and be- 
come hardened to the cries of afflicted humanity. 
In this respect, nations are like individuals ; 
who, if in frequent communion with pain or 
sorrow in others, become gradually to be unaf- 
fected by it. It is so with soldiers. A remark 
made to me by a revolutionary veteran, is char- 
acteristic of nearly all other instances. " The 
first time I was in battle," said he, " I was 
afraid ; I trembled ; the sight of the dead, dying, 
and bleeding, shocked me — but after I had been 
in a few battles, the groans, blood, and agony 
of the wounded around me, moved me no more 
than the most ordinary business of life." As 
with this soldier, so with other soldiers ; and as 
with soldiers, so with nations. Let a nation 
have sanguinary laws ; in the execution of its 
laws, let its citizens be familiar with the de- 
struction of life ; let them often witness their 
fellow-beings in the struggles of dissolution ; 
and they will become indurated with suffering; 
death will cease to excite them. The history 
of public executions fairly tests this position. 
The more crimes a nation causes to be punisha- 
ble with death, and consequently the greater the 
number of executions, the less criminals care 
about that punishment. One fact is alone suf- 
15 



170 LAW OF K1NPMESS. 

fieient to demonstrate this truth. Rev. Mr, 
Roberts, of Bristol, England, put the inquiry to 
one hundred and sixty-seven persons, who were 
under sentence of death at different times, and 
all of whom he visited, whether they had ever 
witnessed a public execution. The result was, 
that one hundred and sixty-five of them had been 
spectators in the crowds gathered on such occa- 
sions. The following instance is quoted by 
Dick,^ from the " Schoolmaster in Newgate/' 
" One morning, a boy," who appears to have been 
previously in the habit of pilfering, " came into 
his father's room, and seeing nothing to eat for 
breakfast but bread and butter on the table, he 
said, ' What! nothing for breakfast? Ah ! wait 
a bit.' He then went out, and in a quarter of 
an hour came back with some steaks and a pint 
of rum, besides having money in his pocket. 
He had gone out and stolen a piece of Irish lin- 
en from a shop on Ludgate Hill, took it to a 
buyer of stolen goods, and bought the articles he 
had brought home, all in the short space of fif- 
teen minutes ; and this was not an uncommon 
thing for him to do, although his parents were 
not in need. The boy was at length transport- 
ed, when he was only fourteen years of age. 
He subsequently detailed to me all his practices, 

♦Mental Illumination, p. ?"6. 



TVATTONAL KINDNESS. 171 

and how he got into crime. His parents resided 
in a court running out of the Old Bailey, and he 
had ivitnessed every execution tuhich had taken 
place during his short career. So much for the 
effect of executions, as supposed to deter from 
crime; — indeed, most of the boys engaged hi 
crime, appear to have a great pleasure in attend- 
ing executions" " It is notorious," says Mr. Bux- 
ton," that executions very rarely take place, with- 
out being the occasion on which new crimes are 
committed. A pickpocket being asked by the 
chaplain of Newgate, how he could venture on 
such a deed, at such a time, very frankly replied, 
* that executions were the best harvests that he 
and his associates had, for when the eyes of the 
spectators are fixed above, their pockets are un- 
protected below.' "^ " One grown man," says 
Mr. E. G. Wakefield, " of great mental powers 
and superior education, who was acquitted of a 
charge of forgery, assured me that the first idea 
of committing a forgery, occurred to him at the 
moment when he was accidentally witnessing 
the execution of Fauntleroy." t Mr. O'Sulli- 
van pertinently inquires, " if the fear of death be 
so powerful a restraint upon the commission of 
crime — how happens it that the multiplication 
of executions has always been found to be a 
multiplication of the crimes for which it is in- 

* Q'Sulllvan's Report, p. 62. f K>id. 



172 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

fiicted ?"* — a fact which is proved by a host of 
instances. In a story, called the " Lesson of 
Life," written by Douglass Jerrold, there is a 
conversation between a monk and a hangman, 
of Paris, in which the following passage occurs : 
— "Ho! hold you there, father — example I 'T is 
a brave example to throttle a man in the public 
streets : why, I know the faces of my audience 
as well as Dominique did. I can show you a 
hundred who never fail at the gallows' foot to 
come and gather good example. Do you 
think, most holy father, that the mob of Paris 
come to a hanging as to a sermon — to amend 
their lives at a gibbet ? No : many come as 
they would take an extra dram ! it gives their 
blood a fillip — stirs them for an hour or two ; 
many to see a fellow-man act a scene which 
they must one day undergo ; many, as to pup- 
pets and ballet-singers, at the Point Neuf ; but, 
for example, why, father, as I am an honest exe- 
cutioner, I have in my day done my office upon 
twenty, all of whom were constant visitors of 
years' standing at my morning levees." The 
principle advanced in this extract, is demon- 
strated by scores of instances which have 
occurred in England and America ; and which 
prove beyond a doubt, that the boasted restraints 
of sanguinary punishments are fallacious, and 

* O'Sullivan's Report, p. 59. 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 173 

that the sight of such executions only hardens 
those who should always he under good influ- 
ences. 

Did we doubt the fact, that waste of life pro- 
duces carelessness of it, the horrible scenes of 
the French Revolution, in which a river of blood 
was shed, and the vile, the pure, the degraded, 
the talented, were indiscriminately swept into 
destruction, would establish it beyond contro- 
versy. There is a remarkable instance, how- 
ever, which is thrillingly interesting, as well as 
illustrative of my theme. 

For centuries, there existed in India, a num- 
ber of communities of robbers and murderers,' 
named Thugs. They journeyed in bands over 
the country, in all directions, robbing and mur- 
dering native travellers, (for they never molested 
Englishmen, from fear of detection.) Their 
mode of executing their victims, was, almost 
universally, by strangling. They never spared 
a victim, on the principle that " dead men tell 
no tales," except it might be a child, saved, to 
be brought up in their murderous occupation. 
At various times, tens of thousands of persons 
were destroyed by the Thugs, who considered 
it as their occupation. In the sessions of 1836, 
held at Jubulpoor, two hundred and forty-one 
prisoners were convicted of the murder of four 
hundred and seventy-four individuals, nearly 
15* 



l?i LAW OF KINDNESS. 

all ii whose corpses were found. And to this 
case, multitudes might be added, swelling the 
instances of murder to an enormous number. 
The most singular fact in regard to this people 
is; that they made it a religious duty to murder. 
They worshipped a goddess, named Bhowanee, 
to whom they prayed, and besought for success 
in their excursions. And if a Thug should 
commit a murder without a favorable omen, such 
as a " lizard chirping, or a crow making a noise 
on a living tree, on the left side," they believe 
that he never will be blessed more. But when 
the omens and rules laid down by their goddess 
are observed, they deem it their duty to mur- 
der, and to feel no sympathy for their victims. 
They consider that travellers, when the omens 
are favorable, are thrown in their way by the 
deity, to be killed. Murder, then, is their 
occupation — their children are taught it — and 
when a son goes out on an expedition for the 
first time, it is prefaced by religious ceremonies, 
invoking success on his attempt. This hor- 
rible organization was principally unveiled by 
officers under Lord William Bentinck, Governor 
General of India, who, with his successors to 
the present time, have almost destroyed the 
Thugs. ^ The fact demonstrated in this case, 

* For a full account of this singular people, see the 
Foreign Quarterly Review, for April, 1838 — and the 
History of the Thugs, by Captain W. H. Sleeman, 2 vols 



NATIONAL KINDNESS 175 

is this : by constantly dealing with murder, in- 
dividuals become reckless of life and of the suf- 
ferings of others ; for the Thugs could murder 
fifty or a hundred persons, with no more emo- 
tion than when engaged in an ordinary transac- 
tion. 

It consequently follows, from the position 
which is sustained by the instances we have 
adduced, that the more a nation is engaged in 
war, the more its people will lose sight of the 
practice of kindness, and become sanguinary in 
their tastes. If nations would consider this fact 
thoroughly, in connection with this simple truth, 
that most wars grow out of trivial circum- 
stances, and then endeavor to settle difficulties 
amicably, it appears to me that the eagle of war 
would have to fold his wings in slumber. 
Think of it as we may, yet it is truth, that most 
wars have no better reason for their origin, than 
the boys, spoken of in one of the Lay Sermons 
of the Ettrick Shepherd, had for their quarrel. 
The boys of two different schools met on the 
ice. One boy said, " What are ye glowtin' at, 
Billy?" The answer was, "What's that to 
you? I'll look where I have a mind, an' hinder 
me if you daur." A blow followed — then the 
battle became general. A boy of one party 
was asked what the other boys had done, that 
they should fight them so. " Oh, nothing at a', 



176 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

man ; we just want to gi'e them a good thrash- 
ing." After fighting till they were tired, one 
of the leaders, streaming with blood, and his 
clothcts in tatters, said to the opposite party, 
" We Q !, I xl tell you what we '11 do wi' ye : if 
ye '11 lei as alone, we '11 let you alone." So the 
war ended, and they went to play. Do not chil- 
dren of a \irger growth engage in deadly war, 
often with no better cause than that which the 
boy assigned, and with about the same results ? 
The way^ in which society or a nation can 
practise the Uw of kindness, are full as many 
as those in wL'ch they can be unkind. And, 
oh ! how mucb. more glorious, and how fraught 
with choice bleitfsmgs to the poor, the ignorant, 
nnd the sinful ! A nation practises the law of 
kindness, when i\ uses every means to amicably 
settle difficulties with other nations ; when it 
has no craving to <.eize the territory of another 
by military conquest ; but, in all its transactions 
with the world, pursues a course of conciliation, 
integrity, and high-mindedness ; and, especially 
when, with noblu effort, it induces two nations 
on the eve of war, to arrange the subject of con- 
tention without bloodshed. A nation practises 
the law of kindness, when it gives orders to its 
generals and admirals not to molest, during 
war, any expeditions of utility pursued by 
the enemy — kindness which was exhibited by 



NATIONAL KINDNKSS. 177 

France, in reference to Captain Cook, when 
directions were given to the captains of their 
ships, to treat Cook as " the commander of a 
neutral or allied power," should they meet him 
while the then existing war continued. The 
directions were issued in March, 1779. By 
this act of kindness, France gained more true 
credit than though it had conquered a thousand 
ships. The same kindness was manifested by the 
great and good Franklin, when, as the Plenipo- 
tentiary of the United States, in Paris, during the 
Revolution, he earnestly recommended the offi- 
cers of the American navy to spare the ships 
of " that most celebrated discoverer, Captain 
Cook." 

A nation practises the law of kindness when 
it gives attention to the comfort of prisoners 
taken in war, instead of confining them with 
the utmost rigor in unhealthy buildings, on 
short allowances of food, and with the most 
cruel treatment, as has been too universally the 
case heretofore. But whenever prisoners of 
war have been met with kindness, its results have 
been decidedly excellent. During our last war, 
who does not know, that in two or three in- 
stances, the crews of captured British frigates 
returned their warmest thanks to their captors 
for the very kind treatment which they had re- 
ceived ? Thus proving that a single shadow of 



ITS LAW OF KINDNESS. 

the law, " love your enemies," even though in 
the circumstances of war, has its appropriate 
and legitimate effect in drawing out the admira- 
tion of the heart. Who does not know that the 
character of the lamented Lawrence, of the ill- 
fated Chesapeake, excited the warmest respect 
from his foes, who, even in the time of contest, 
mourned his death ? And who does not know 
that General Brock was, on account of his good- 
ness of character, remembered with regret, when 
killed in battle, not only by the Canadians, but 
also by the Americans ? Thus showing, that 
kindness will produce corresponding feeling in 
the souls of national foes. 

A community practises the law of kindness, 
when it avoids all sanguinary laws ; when its 
laws are based on a philanthropy which seeks 
not only to protect society and deter others 
from crime, but also aims to reform the offender 
and restore him to sound moral health. * Be- 
cause a man is a criminal, it does not argue that 

*Lord Coke, in his epilogue to his Third Institute, 
which treats of the crown law, after observing that fre- 
quent punishment does not prevent crime, says — " What 
a lamentable case it is that so many Christian men and 
women should be strangled on that cursed tree, the gal- 
iows, insomuch as if in a large field a man might see to- 
gether all the Christians that but in one year, throughout 
England, come to that untimely and ignominious end j ii 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 179 

he is incapable of becoming better, or that he is 
devoid of feeling. A judge in central New 
York, whose head is whitened with the coming 
frosts of age, and who has long sat on the bench 
of justice, said to me — " In the whole course of 
my experience as a judge, I have never yet had 
a criminal before me for sentence, but whose 
feelings I could touch, and whose heart I could 
subdue, by referring to the mother who watched 
over and sustained him, or by kindly and affec- 
tionately describing to him the evil which he had 
brought upon himself." A community practises 
the law of kindness, when it places men over its 
prisons, who are qualified for their duty by a 
thorough acquaintance with human nature, by 
the most extensive and earnest Christian benev- 

there were any spark of grace or charity in him, it 
would make his heart to bleed for pity and compassion." 
His lordship then proceeds to show that the method of 
preventing crime is — 1. By training up youth in the 
principles of religion and habits of industry. 2. In the 
execution of good laws. 3. In the granting pardon very 
rarely, and upon good reasons. He then concludes 
" that the consideration of this prevention were worthy 
oi the wisdom of parliament ; and in the mean time ex- 
pert and wise men to make preparation for ut benedicat 
tis dominus. Blessed shall he be that layeth the first 
stone of the building ; more blessed that proceeds in it ; 
most of all, that finisheth it, to the glory of God and the 
honor of our king and nation."— *rnny Magazine. VoL 
VIII., p. 283. 



180 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

olence, joined with prudent firmness, and by a 
deep conviction that criminals are morally sick, 
and are deprived of their liberty only that moral 
medicine may be applied to them to restore thern 
to the health of virtue. 

A nation practises the law of kindness when 
its energies are directed to the advancement of 
education in reference to each and every one of 
its members. Especially when its attention is 
directed to the education of the poor children 
who may now be found in every community, 
growing up in ignorance, theft, and crime of all 
kinds, to fill jails and prisons, and at last to 
form a debased rabble, subject to the nod of any 
demagogue who may use them to destroy our 
government. The kindness consists in prepar- 
ing them by knowledge to become good citizens 
and defenders of the American Constitution, as 
well as lovers of religion and virtue. A nation 
or community practises the law of kindness, 
when it stretches the broad hand of its protec- 
tion over the poor as well as the rich, and seeks 
to raise the condition of the lowly and degraded 
— when it aims to remove poverty and distress, 
by encouraging industry, by compelling the idle 
to be active, by removing the causes of crime, 
and by holding out encouragement to the weak 
and the feeble. In these, and in many other 
ways, a nation or a community may practise the 



NATIONAL KINDNESS. 181 

law of kindness. And I have no hesitation in 
saying, that a nation or community practising 
it, will become the abode of truth, virtue, peace, 
justice, temperance, and love towards God and 
man. 

16 



CHAPTER X, 

KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION, 

Hence jarring sectaries may learn 
Their real interests to discern ; 
That brother should not war with brother, 
And worry and devour each other." 

COWPER. 

Perhaps there is no one subject pertaining to 
the welfare of men, in which the practice of 
kindness is more needed, or is more efficacious, 
than in the method of advancing or establishing 
what, in different ages of Christendom, has been 
named Religion. And it may well he added, 
that in no one department of life has it been 
more flagrantly neglected, or its opposite, cruel* 
ty, been more thoroughly manifested in all its 
horrible features. For no sooner did professed 
Christians exclude the Pagans from the govern- 
ment of the Roman Empire, than they began to 
persecute each other with all the painful forms 
in which bigotry can develop itself. And 
from that time to the present, as sect after sect 
has obtained the ascendency over other sects, 
persecution, in some one of its numerous phase3 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 1S3 

has been pat into requisition, to establish a uni- 
formity of religious faith. Seldom indeed are 
the instances in which truth has been scattered, 
and left to win its own triumphs over error in 
minds untrammelled by the fear of political 
power. In most cases, the spirit of Mahommed's 
watchword to his conquered subjects, " the Ko- 
ran or the sabre," has been adopted by domi- 
nant sects of professed followers of Christ, in 
order to compel other and weaker sects to bow 
to their will and receive their creed as the word 
of God. It is too true that the records of eccle- 
siastical history speak in acts of blood, instead 
of rejoicing in the blessings of a Christian toler- 
ation, whose foundation is the divine truth, that 
"love worlieth no ill to his neighbor" 

Let any person take up the history of the 
sons and daughters of Israel, from the time 
when Constantine, Emperor of the Eoman Em- 
pire, reared a politico-christian banner, very 
nearly to our own days — and what is its voice ? 
For their stern and dogmatic adhesion to the 
faith of their fathers, professed Christians have 
made them write their history in their own 
blood, and suffer forms of cruelty — especially in 
Germany, by the first horde of crusaders under 
the command of Peter the Hermit and Walter 
the Pennyless, and half a century after, in the 
same country, under the instigation of the 



184 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

preaching of the monk Eodolph, who advocated 
the necessity of " wreaking vengeance on all 
the enemies of God," and in the fifteenth cen- 
tury under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
in Spain^ — forms of cruelty which make hu- 
manity shrink with affright, and which none but 
hearts hardened with the iron of revenge, could 
inflict. The multitudes of heretics, or, in other 
words, of those who differed in faith from the 
reigning sect of the times, who perished at the 
Auto da Fes, on the racks, and in the dungeons 
of the unholy inquisition — the murder of sixty 
thousand Protestant Huguenots, the slaughter 
of whom commenced on the 24th of August, 
1572, under the reign of Charles the Ninth, 
of France, and with circumstances of horror t — 
the persecution of the Puritans in England — 
the whipping of Baptists, the hanging of Qua- 
kers, and the destruction of reputed witchest 

* See 3d vol. Milman's History of the Jews, in the 
Family Library. 

f See Goodrich's Ecclesiastical History, p. 291. 

X Red Jacket, the famous Chief of the Seneca Indians, 
once made a most sarcastic allusion to the witchcraft of 
New England, which I cannot forbear giving at this 
place, though it has no reference to the theme of this 
work. In 1821, a member of his tribe died. The cause 
of his death was not understood ; which, with some other 
circumstances, led them to believe that he was bewitched. 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 1&5 

by the pilgrim fathers of New England — the 
oppression of the Catholic sons of Ireland, un- 
der the tithe system — the spirit of rancor and 
hatred which so many of the American sects 
exhibit towards each other — are so many tokens 
of the dreadful results arising from the exist- 

The woman who attended him was denounced as the 
witch, and, according to the laws of her tribe, was con- 
demned to death ; which sentence was executed by a 
chief named Tom- Jemmy. Tom- Jemmy was tried by 
the whites for murder, but was acquitted. Red Jacket 
was one of the witnesses. While on the stand, the Sen- 
eca witch doctrine was ridiculed by some of the Ameri- 
cans. Red Jacket replied in the following strain : — 

" What ! do you denounce us as fools and bigots, be- 
cause we still continue to believe that which you your- 
selves sedulously inculcated two centuries ago ? Your 
divines have thundered this doctrine from the pulpit, 
your judges have pronounced it from the bench, your 
courts of justice have sanctioned it with the formalities 
of Lie law, and you would now punish our unfortunate 
brother for adherence to the superstitions of his fathers ! 
Go to Salem ! Look at the records of your government, 
and you will find hundreds executed for the very crime 
which has called forth the sentence of condemnation 
upon this woman, and drawn down the arm of ven- 
geance upon her. What have our brothers done more 
than the rulers of your people have done ? and what 
crime has this man committed by executing, in a sum- 
mary way, the laws of his country, and the injunctions 
of his God ?"— Drake's Book of the Indians, Bock V. 
pp. 103, 104. 

16* 



186 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

ence of the law of revenge or cruelty in the 
Christian church, and its fatal exercise in en- 
deavoring to produce uniformity of faith. Had 
all the followers of the Messiah, from the days 
of Constantine to the present moment, practised 
the golden rule, "whatsoever ye would tha* 
men should do to you, do ye even so to them,' 
under the influence of the great Christian law 
" overcome evil with good," the history of the 
Christian church would have been a history of 
virtue and kindness, instead of being stained 
with blood and revenge. 

No axiom can be more evident, than that 
every form of persecution should be excluded 
from the cause of Christianity — even if for no 
other reason, yet for the great fact, that persecu- 
tion checks and destroys freedom of mind, to the 
free exercise of which we are indebted not only 
for advance in Christian truth, but also for the 
developments of every other department of 
knowledge. It is the free exercise of mind 
which has made astronomy a science; has ex- 
plored the surface of the earth, both in geogra- 
phy and geology; has opened the mine, and 
brought gold, silver, iron, and coal into effective 
use ; has applied steam to the ship and the car, 
and fashioned the useful machinery everywhere 
in operation ; has developed the wonders of 
chemis' ry, the intricacy of physiology, and the 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 187 

beauties and powers of literature. In fact, it is 
to the free exercise of mind, that tke white man 
has a dwelling so much superior to the hut of a 
Hottentot ; is so far advanced in knowledge be- 
yond the savage ; and, instead of bowing to a 
senseless idol, like the blinded pagans, kneels 
with intelligent worship before the Spirit of the 
Universe. Now, if God intended that these 
results should be brought about only by the free 
and generous exercise of mind, did he not also 
intend that the mind should be free in obtaining 
Christian truth ? When God said, " come now, 
let us reason together" — when Messiah said, 
" why, of yourselves, judge ye not what is 
right ? " — when Paul said, " prove all things ; 
hold fast that which is good " — we discover that 
man is desired to exert his intellectual faculties 
in order to define Christian truth. 

Oh, how many men, in days that are now 
past, have toiled long and faithfully to secure to 
themselves the privilege of freely subjecting 
Christianity to the voice of reason, and at last 
have sealed their labors with martyrdom ! And 
yet, notwithstanding their sufferings and sorrows, 
ther^ is no scene in nature more sublime than 
the efforts of mind to acquire perfect freedom 
in religious matters. We may behold the ocean 
heaving in its fearful grandeur — we may look 
upon the evening sky glorying with its count- 



188 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

less hosts of suns and worlds — we may gaze at 
the raging waters which thunder down Niaga- 
ra's front, in the deep bass of nature's awful 
voice — but yet, to see individuals patiently en- 
daring tribulation, and, at last, courageously 
meeting death, rather than give up the freedom 
of their minds to a wicked and fanatical super- 
stition, is more noble than all these. It is the 
struggle of right against wrong ; of good against 
evil ; of Christ in the soul against Satan in the 
passions ; of mind against spiritual wickedness ; 
of freedom of thought against slavery of the in- 
tellect. And when the victory is won, and man 
stands forth, mildly but independently, and with 
generous charity for others, to avow his faith 
without any fear of his fellows, it is a more en- 
nobling sight than all pageantries and shows. 

But it needs no considerations to prove that 
cruelty, revenge or persecution, are never of 
right to be used Ly ihe professed Christian in 
attempting to become ruler over the consciences 
of others. It never succeeded in making a gen- 
uine believer ; and it never can make one. It 
may make slaves — it may chain minds, and 
compel them, through fear, to give assent to the 
faith presented them — but an understanding be- 
lief cometh not from persecution : it arises from 
perfect freedom in the examination of Chris- 
tianity. On the subject of toleration, the follow- 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 1S9 

ing tale, said to be from the pen of Dr. Franklin, 
is full of the noblest instruction. " And it came 
to pass after these things, that Abraham sat at 
the door of his tent, about the going down of 
the sun. And behold! a man bent with age, 
coming from the way of the wilderness, leaning 
on a staff. And Abraham arose, met him, and 
said unto him ; ' Turn in, I pray thee, and wash 
thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt 
arise early in the morning, and go on thy way ' 
And the man said ; ' Nay, for I will abide under 
the tree.' But Abraham pressed him greatly : 
so he turned, and they went into the tent. And 
Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did 
eat. And when Abraham saw that the man 
blessed not God, he said unto him ; ' Wherefore 
dost thou not worship the most high God, crea- 
tor of heaven and earth?' And the man an- 
swered and said, ' I worship the God of my 
fathers in the way which they have appointed.' 
And Abraham's wrath was kindled against the 
man, and he arose and fell upon, and drove him 
forth with blows into the wilderness. And God 
called unto Abraham, saying : ' Abraham, where 
is the stranger ? ' And Abraham answered and 
said : ' Lord, he would not worship thee, nei- 
ther would he call upon thy name ; therefore 
have I driven him out before my face into the 
wilderness.' And God said, ' Have I borne with 



" 90 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

him these hundred and ninety years, and nour- 
ished him, and clothed him, notwithstanding life 
rebellion against me ; and couldst not thou, who 
art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?' 
And Abraham said : * Let not the anger of my 
Lord wax hot against his servant ; lo ! I have 
sinned; I pray thee, forgive me.' And Abra- 
ham arose, and went forth into the wilderness, 
and sought diligently for the man, and found 
him, and returned with him to the tent; and 
when he had treated him kindly, he sent him 
away on the morrow, with gifts." 

The thought thus expressed by the veneiable 
philosopher in the style of Scripture composi- 
tion, is as worthy of him as it manifests the true 
spirit of Christian toleration. It is the great 
fact which the world so slowly learns, that one 
individual possesses no right to persecute ano- 
ther individual because he differs from him in 
faith, for they both have the equal privilege of 
cherishing their respective opinions. If error 
is abroad ; and undoubtedly there is much of it ; 
the most certain mode of paving the way for its 
destruction, is, for the sects to avoid abusing and 
misrepresenting each other, and to exhibit the 
most enlarged kindness to all followers of Christ, 
of whatever sectarian name they may be. In 
this manner the harshness and inveteracy of the 
sects would cease, and their members, by con- 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 191 

sequence, would gradually come into that Chris- 
tian and intellectual frame of mind, which would 
prepare them for vigorously following out the 
sublime and important question, WHAT IS 
TRUTH ? This tolerating kindness is the more 
necessary, from the fact, that as community is 
now situated, with a vast many influences oper- 
ating to make people differ in opinion, it is im- 
possible to bring them to a unity of faith at pre- 
sent. How wicked, then, to force people of one 
sect to adopt the creed of another sect, by slan- 
dering them and their opinions ; by endeavoring 
to bring popularity and fashion to bear against 
them ; and by persecuting them in every possi- 
ble manner which the age will permit ! The 
self-reproach of Charles the Fifth, Emperor of 
Germany, is full of instruction in reference to 
this point. After abdicating his throne and re- 
tiring to a monastery, he passed away his time 
with mechanical arts, particularly that of watch- 
making. One day he broke out with the excla- 
mation, "What an egregious fool must I have 
been to have squandered so much blood and 
treasure, in an absurd attempt to make all men 
think alike, when I cannot even make a few 
watches keep time together!"^ May not all 
those in modern times, who attempt to enforce 

♦Penny Magazine, Vol. L, p 40, 



192 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

uniformity of faith, very properly apply this re- 
buke to themselves ? 

To pursue the broadest highway of kindness 
in reference to the multitudes of widely differ- 
ing sectarians, does not presuppose the least 
backwardness in proclaiming what each sect has 
embraced as the truth. Each denomination 
possesses the clearest right to advance, discuss, 
and, if possible, prove its peculiar opinions, and 
no other denomination has any divine or legiti- 
mate human authority, to deprive it of this ines- 
timable privilege. But that denomination wan- 
ders very far from the Christian spirit, as well 
as from its own interests, if it speaks its faith in 
thunder, and breathes maledictions upon all who 
do not bow to it without question. It is the in- 
junction of Paul, to " speak the truth in love." 
Let it be invested with affection — let it breathe 
from the heart, with heaven-born charity for those 
who deem it error — let it come with the unhes- 
itating acknowledgment, that all persons possess 
the right to avow, defend, and enjoy whatever 
they may have imbibed as truth — let all the kind 
offices of society be cheerfully discharged with- 
out any regard to peculiarity of faith — let the 
spirit exist between the sects, which the Messiah, 
in the following touchingly simple narration, 
described as existing between a Samaritan and 
a Jew — and it will not only destroy persecution 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 193 

but it will give to people such desires, .iiat in- 
stead of fighting for sectarism, they will press 
earnestly on in the divine work of obtaining 
Christianity as it fell from the lips of Christ and 
his apostles. — " A certain man went down from 
Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, 
who stripped him of his raiment and wounded 
him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And 
by chance there came down a certain priest that 
way ; and when he saw him, he passed by on 
the other side. And likewise a Levite, when 
he was at the place, came and looked on him, 
and passed by on the other side. But a certain 
Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; 
and when he saw him, he had compassion on 
him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, 
pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own 
beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care 
of him. And on the morrow, when he departed, 
he took out two pence, and gave them to the 
host, and said unto him, Take care of him ; and 
whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come 
again I will repay thee. Which now of these 
three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that 
fell among the thieves ? And he said, He that 
showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto 
him, Go, and do thou likewise."* That such 

* See Luke x. 30—37. 
17 



194 LAW OF KIR DRESS. 

Christian charity will break down sectarian 
harshness and blind persecution, is as evident 
as that the spring sun will melt ice and frost 
from the bud, and expand it into the loveliness 
of a flower. As direct proof of this fact, some 
instances will be adduced. 

On a certain occasion, Messiah was perform- 
ing a journey to Jerusalem. While on his way, 
he sent messengers before him to prepare placed 
of reception for him. Among others, they went 
to a village of the Samaritans. But when 
Messiah came, the Samaritans refused to receive 
him, " because his face was as though he would 
go to Jerusalem." On account of their rival 
religions, there existed the most bitter prejudice 
between the Jews and Samaritans ; which ex- 
plains the fact of the Samaritans not receiving 
the Saviour. The disciples were exercised with 
indignation because of the decided opposition 
manifested against Christ. " And when his 
disciples, James and John, saw this, they said, 
'Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come 
down from heaven, and consume them, even as 
Eliasdid?'" Here was the genuine spirit of 
revenge. Because the Samaritans manifested 
bigotry towards Messiah, they would sweep 
them from the face of the earth. But how acted 
Jesus ? On the broadest scale of kindness. 
"He turned, and rebuked them, and said, 'Ye 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 195 

know not what manner of spirit ye art of — for 
the Son of man is not come to destroy men's 
lives, but to save them.' And they went to 
another village."^ He not only disapproved 
the spirit of his disciples — he not only left the 
Samaritans unmolested — but he quietly sought 
another place of repose. Had he been like many 
who have professed his name since his day, he 
would have desolated that offending village with 
fire and blood — but as his was the duty to di- 
vinely " love his enemies," he chose peace 
rather than war; kindness rather than harsh- 
ness. And there can be no doubt but that the 
kindness of the Saviour opened the path for the 
apostles to afterwards preach, "the Gospel in 
many villages of the Samaritans "~\ to the con- 
version of crowds of their inhabitants. 

The beautiful results of kindness and tolera- 
tion in reference to difference of religious faith, 
are very admirably manifested in the case of 
John Frederic Oberlin, whose character ha; 
already been described. He knew no bigotry 
His Christian character did not dream of usins: 
an individual harshly and unkindly, on the sim- 
ple ground of difference of opinion. He looked 
upon all around him as his brethren. " His 
tolerance," says a writer, for some time a resi- 

* Luke ix. 51 — 56. f Acts viii. 25. 



196 LAW OF KINJNESS. 

dent in his district, " was almost unbounded. 
He administered the sacrament to Catholics 
Lutherans, and Caivinists at the same time ; 
and, because they would not eat the same bread, 
he had, on the plate, bread of different kinds, 
wafer, leavened, and unleavened. In everything 
the same spirit appeared ; and it extended not 
only to his Catholic but also to his Jewish neigh- 
bors, and made him many friends among them 
all."* This was genuine Christian kindness; — 
it was a splendid illustration of the divine law, 
"overcome evil with good." And what was 
the result? Most noble ! Different sects lived 
in the utmost peace and harmony, where the 
good Oberlin possessed an influence — bigotry 
was disarmed of its sting, and sectarian bitter- 
ness gave place to Christian charity. And when 
the funeral of Oberlin was attended, the effect 
of his truly sublime conduct was more than ever 
brought to light. To use the language of the 
Editor of the Expositor :t "On the day of in* 
terment, a vast concourse assembled, consisting 
indiscriminately of Catholics and Protestants, 
and the funeral procession reached two miles. 
Throughout the immense multitude, one gen 
eral expression of grief prevailed. Sectarian 
feelings can hardly be said to have been sus- 

* Universal;' st Expositor, Vol. III., p. 127. 
t Ibid. Vol. [IT., p. 128 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 197 

pended on the mournful occasion : they had long 
before been eradicated. Even the Roman Cath- 
olic women surrounded the burial place, all 
dressed in mourning, and kneeling in silent 
prayer ; and several Roman Catholic priests 
habited in their canonicals, took their seats 
among the members of the Consistory, and evi- 
dently participated in the general affliction. " 
This most beautiful exhibition of Christian tol- 
eration breathes proof of all that has been ad- 
vanced on the subject ; and demonstrates that, 
wherever it is practised, contention and ill-will 
must cease, and kindness and affection must 
generally prevail. 

A very admirable illustration of the power of 
kindness to subdue opposition, when manifested 
by a member of one sect towards the members 
of another sect, is given in Bancroft's History 
of the United States. It manifests itself in the 
conduct of John Archdale, who was chosen 
Governor of South Carolina, by the proprietaries 
of that colony, in 1695. " With the Spaniards 
at St. Augustine, friendly relations sprung up: 
a Quaker could respect the faith of a Papist. 
Four Indians, converts of the Spanish priests, 
captives to the Yammasees, and exposed to sale 
as slaves, were ransomed by Archdale, and sent 
to the governor of St. Augustine. ' I shall man- 
ifest reciprocal kindness,' was his reply, ' and 
17* 



198 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

shall always observe a good correspondence with 
you ; and when an English vessel was wrecked 
in Florida, the Spaniards retaliated the benevo- 
lence of Archdale."^ 

The instance now to be introduced, is one of 
the most extraordinary character, pouring a flood 
of light upon the facts we are considering. This 
instance is given in a discourse preached by 
Rev. Claudius Buchanan in Bristol, England, 
February 26, 1809.1 

" Two Mahometans of Arabia, persons of con- 
sideration in their own country, have been lately 
converted to the Christian faith. One of them 
has already suffered martyrdom, and the other 
is now engaged in translating the Scriptures, 
and in concerting plans for the conversion of his 
countrymen. The name of the martyr was 
Abdallah; and the name of the other, who is 
now translating the Scriptures, is Sabat ; or, as 
he is called since his Christian baptism, Nathan- 
iel Sabat. Sabat resided in my house some 
time before I left India, and I had from his own 
mouth the chief part of the account which I 
shall now give to you. Some particulars I had 
from others. His conversion took place after 
the martyrdom of Abdallah, ' to whose death he 

♦Vol. III., p. 17. 

t Buchanan's Researches in Asia, p 236, and onward. 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 199 

was consenting:' and he related the circum- 
stances to me with many tears. 

" Abdallah and Sabat were intimate friends, 
and being young men of family in Arabia, they 
agreed to travel together, and to visit foreign 
countries. They were both zealous Mahome- 
tans. Sabat is son of Ibrahim Sabat, a noble 
family of the line of Beni- Sabat, who trace their 
pedigree to Mahomet. The two friends left 
Arabia, after paying their adorations at the tomb 
of their prophet at Mecca, and travelled through 
Persia, and thence to Cabul. Abdallah was ap- 
pointed to an office of state, under Zemaun Shah, 
king of Cabul ; and Sabat left him there, and 
proceeded on a tour through Tartary. 

4 While Abdallah remained at Cabul, he was 
converted to the Christian faith by the perusal 
of a Bible (as is supposed) belonging to a Chris- 
tian from Armenia, then residing at Cabul. In 
the Mahometan states, it is death for a man of 
rank to become a Christian. Abdallah endeav- 
ored for a time to conceal his conversion, but 
finding it no longer possible, he determined to 
flee to some of the Christian churches near tha 
Caspian Sea. He accordingly left Cabul in 
disguise, and had gained the great city of Bo- 
chara, in Tartary, when he was met in the 
streets of that city, by his friend, Sabat, who im- 
mediately recognised him. Sabat had heard of 



200 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

his conversion and flight, and was filled with 
indignation at his conduct. Abdallah knew his 
danger, and threw himself at the feet of Sabat. 
He confessed that he was a Christian, and im- 
plored him, by the sacred tie of their former 
friendship, to let him escape with his life. ' But, 
sir,' said Sabat, when relating the story himself. 
4 1 had no pity. I caused my servants to seize 
him, and I delivered him up to Morad Shah, 
King of Bochara. He was sentenced to die, 
and a herald went throughout the city of Bocha- 
ra, announcing the time of his execution. An 
immense multitude attended, and the chief men 
of the city. I also went, and stood near to Ab- 
dallah. He was offered his life, if he would 
abjure Christ, the executioner standing by him 
with his sword in his hand. ' No,' said he, (as 
if the proposition were impossible to be com- 
plied with,) ' I cannot abjure Christ.' Then 
one of his hands was cut off at the wrist. He 
stood firm, his arm hanging by his side, with 
but little motion. A physician, by desire of the 
king, offered to heal the wound, if he would re- 
cant. He made no answer, but looked up stead- 
fastly towards heaven, like Stephen the first 
martyr, his eyes streaming with tears. He did 
not look with anger toward me. He looked at 
me, but it was benignly, and with the counte- 
nance of forgiveness. His other hand was then 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 201 

cut off. But, sir, said Sabat, in his imperfect 
English, 'he never changed, he never changed.' 
And when he bowed his head to receive the 
blow of death, all Bochara seemed to say, ' What 
new thin^ is this?' 

" Sabat had indulged the hope that Abdallah 
would have recante-d when he was offered his 
life ; but when he saw that his friend was dead, 
he resigned himself to grief and remorse. He 
travelled from place to place, seeking rest and 
finding none. At last he thought he would 
visit India. He accordingly came to Madras 
about five years ago. Soon after his arrival he 
was appointed by the English government a 
Mufti, or expounder of Mahometan law : his 
great learning, and respectable station in his 
own country, rendering him eminently qualified 
for that office. And now the period of his own 
conversion drew near. While he was at Visa- 
gapatam, in the Northern Circars, exercising his 
professional duties, Providence brought in his 
way a New Testament in Arabic. He read it 
with deep thought, the Koran lying before him. 
He compared them together, and at length the 
truth of the word of God fell on his mind, as he 
expressed it, like a flood of light. Soon after- 
wards he proceeded to Madras, a journey of 
three hundred miles, to seek Christian baptism; 
and having made a public confession of his 



202 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

faith, he was baptized by the Rev. Dr. Kerr, in 
the English church ai that place, by the name 
of Nathaniel, in the twenty-seventh year of his 
age. 

" Being now desirous to devote his future life 
to the glory of God, he resigned his secular 
employ, and came by invitation to Bengal, 
where he is now engaged in translating the 
Scriptures into the Persian language. This 
work hath not hitherto been executed, for want 
of a translator of sufficient ability. The Per- 
sian is an important language in the East, being 
the general language of Western Asia, particu- 
larly among the higher classes, and is under- 
stood from Calcutta to Damascus. But the 
great work which occupies the attention of this 
noble Arabian, is the promulgation of the Gospel 
among his own countrymen ; and from the pres- 
ent fluctuations of religious opinion in Arabia, 
he is sanguine in his hopes of success. His first 
work is entitled, (Neama Besharatin HI Arabi,) 
( Happy News for Arabia;' written in the Na- 
buttee, or common dialect of the country. It con- 
tains an eloquent and argumentative elucidation 
of the truth of the Gospel, with copious author- 
ities admitted by the Mahometans themselves, 
and particularly by the Wahabians. And pre- 
faced to it, is an account of the conversion of the 
author, and an appeal to the members of his 



KINDNESS AND PERSECUTION. 203 

well known family in Arabia, for the truth of 
the facts. 

" The following circumstance in the history 
of Sabat ought not to have been omitted. 
When his family in Arabia had heard that he 
had followed the example of Abdallah, and be- 
come a Christian, they despatched his brother 
to India, (a voyage of two months,) to assassi- 
nate him. While Sabat w r as sitting in his house 
at Visagapatam, his brother presented himself, 
in the disguise of a Faqueer or beggar, having a 
da of^er concealed under his mantle. He rushed 
on Sabat, and wounded him. But Sabat seized 
his arm, and his servants came to his assistance. 
He then recognised his brother. The assassin 
would have become the victim of public justice, 
but Sabat interceded for his brother, and sent 
him home in peace, with letters and presents to 
his mother's house in Arabia." 

Instances like those already presented, might 
be added to the number given — but enough has 
been collected to establish the object of this 
chapter. It is beyond question true, that an 
individual or a sect, who wishes to disseminate 
religious views, will effect that desire most 
rapidly, by pursuing, through good and evil re- 
port, through opposition and persecution, a uni- 
form course of kindness and charity. Even 
error can be more thoroughly scattered when 



204 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

conjoined with kindness, than truth can when 
conjoined with opposition and persecution. And 
to this, I will add, what appears to me an un- 
questionable proposition, viz., that those individu- 
als or sects who are harsh and uncharitable in 
advancing their peculiar views; who strive te 
enforce those views upon others, in an unkind 
and violent mode ; are not only unwise, but are 
positive enemies to the Saviour; since his cause 
is never so endangered as when its professed 
followers become persecutors. The true guide 
and light for professed Christians, when propa- 
gating what they consider religious truth, are 
contained in the expressive direction of the 
apostle Paul—- SPEAKING THE TRUTH 
IN LOVE." 



CHAPTER XL 

KINDNESS AND PUNISHMENT. 

' Her weeds to robes of glory turn, 
Her looks with kindling radiance burn, 
And from her lips these accents steal. — 
God smites to bless, he wounds to heal." 

There is a point, however, concerning the 
law of kindness, where some perplexity arises, 
and much doubt exists. Many people associate 
with the idea of a uniform practice of kindness, 
the absence of pain, the putting aside all re- 
straints upon evil, and the sufferance of offend- 
ers, without attempting to check them otherwise 
than by a mild word. This is a mistake. The 
law of kindness has no affinity to lawlessness. 
It indeed pre-supposes the absence of all cruelty 
— but it does not pre-suppose the absence of 
proper punishment for sin, or the necessary 
check upon the transgressor. Kindness often 
dictates the application of pain, as frequent cases 
of the amputation of limbs to save the lives of 
sufferers, fully prove. The parent who neglects 
to restrain and correct his children, is as unkind 
as the parent whose chastisements become cruel- 
18 



206 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

ties from excessive severity. The state or king- 
dom which is weak in the administration of just 
and proper laws, is as unkind as the state or 
kingdom which possesses cruel and sanguinary 
laws, and is revengefully bloody in their execu- 
tion. Therefore, while kindness deprecates all 
cruelty, and is totally opposed to all pain result- 
ing from a revengeful spirit and having no good 
object in view, it, at the same time, contends for 
all chastisement which is calculated to produce 
good as its ultimate effect. For when an indi- 
vidual is diseased with sin, kindness advocates 
the use of the probe and lancet of pain, in order 
to produce sound, moral health in him. This 
view accords with Christianity and true phi- 
losophy. 

In the Bible, punishment is represented as 
flowing from the purest kindness, and as aiming 
to produce reconciliation and obedience in him 
or them who are exercised by it. For while, in 
the voice of divine justice, it denounces chas- 
tisement upon all sinners, according to their 
criminality, it also affirms that the merciful 
wisdom and loving kindness of him who is 
Governor in all the earth, are manifested in that 
chastisement, by so arranging it that it shall 
ultimate in the reformation of its subjects. And 
as an illustration of its nature, the Saviour spoke 
of a wandering prodigal, who strayed from the 



KINDNESS AND PUNISHMENT. 207 

house of his father, fell into sin, was punished, 
and was so subdued by it, that he returned home 
a repentant son. The following two passages 
are distinct in setting forth the character of 
punishment which the kindness of God admin- 
isters : — " If his children forsake my law, and 
walk not in my judgments ; if they break my 
statutes, and keep not my commandments ; then 
will I visit their transgression with the rod, and 
their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, my 
loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, 
nor suffer my faithfulness to fail."^ " Now no 
chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, 
but grievous ; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth 
the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them 
which are exercised thereby." t The teaching 
of these passages is too obvious to be mistaken. 
Formed in the faultless principles of infinite 
justice and love, it seeks to render substantial 
kindness to those who suffer it, by purging them 
of the evils of sin. And that this punishment, 
conjoined with heavenly truth, in the hands of 
the Saviour, will succeed in reforming all sin- 
ners according to the times of divine appoint- 
ment, is demonstrated by the Scriptures : — " For 
it pleased the Father that in him (Christ) 
should all fulness dwell; and having made 
peace through the blood of his cross, by him to 

* Psalm lxxxix. 30—33. j Hebrews xii. 11. 



20S LAW OF KINDNESS. 

reconcile all things unto himself ; by him I say, 
whether they be things in earth or things in 
heaven." 5 ^ When this sublime and ever desi- 
rable work shall be accomplished, then the spirit- 
exciting declaration of John shall be fulfilled : 
" And every creature which is in heaven, and 
on earth, and under the earth, and such as are 
m the sea, and all that are in them, heard I say- 
ing, blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, 
be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and 
unto the Lamb, forever and ever/'t 

Taking these views as the basis of kindness 
when connected with punishment, we discover 
the philosophy of divine justice and benevolence 
to be the prevention of sin and the reformation 
of the offender. And no reflecting mind can 
fail of perceiving that this philosophy is rapidly 
manifesting itself in the government of nations, 
of schools, of families, and of criminals. Presi- 
dent Wayland remarked, in an address to the 
Prison Discipline Society, that " it is in vain to 
punish men unless you reform them."t The 
world is rising up to this noble fact. Though 
a popular author has said, " To reform the crim- 
inal, to cure him of the moral disease which led 
him into crime, to impart appropriate instruc- 
tion to his mind, and to prepare the way for his 

* Col. i. 19, 20. See also 1 Cor. xv. 24—28. 

t Rev. v. 13. 

tSee p. 163 of Ladies' Repository, Vol . IX. 



KINDNESS AND PUNISHMENT. 209 

restoration to society as a renovated character, 
are circumstances which seem to have been en- 
tirely overlooked in the arrangements connected 
with our criminal legislation,"* yet it is being 
more and more discovered, that not only do san- 
guinary, revengeful punishments fail of checking 
crime, but that mild and merciful laws, aiming 
to correct and reform offenders, are more salu- 
tary in their influence and more productive of 
good in their results. And it is a pleasing fact, 
that multitudes of parents and teachers, in gov- 
erning their children and scholars, now see and 
are practising the truth, that it is far better to 
administer the punishment which kindness dic- 
tates, than to administer the punishment which 
revenge suggests. An author, already quoted, 
says, " The great object of all civil punishments 
ought to be, not only the prevention of crimes, 
but also the reformation of the criminal, in or- 
der that a conviction of the evil of his conduct 
may be impressed upon his mind, and that he 
may be restored to society as a renovated char- 
acter. When punishments are inflicted with a 
degree of severity beyond what is necessary to 
accomplish these ends, the code which sanctions 
them becomes an engine of cruelty and injus- 
tice."! Punishment, when cruel and revenge- 

* Dick's Mental Illumination, p. 335. 
f Dick's Philosophy of Religion, p. 157 

18* 



210 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

ful, increases the very evil which it seeks to de- 
stroy. Hence says the same writer : " This was 
strikingly exemplified in the reign of Henry 
VIII. , remarkable for the abundance of its 
crimes, which certainly did not arise from the 
mildness of punishment. In that reign alone, 
says his historian, seventy-two thousand execu- 
tions took place, for robberies alone, exclusive 
of the religious murders which are known to 
have been numerous — amounting on an average, 
to six executions a day, Sundays included, dur- 
ing the whole reign of that monarch."^ On 
the contrary, when punishments are mild and 
merciful, and aim to reform offenders, crimes 
have proportionably decreased, and the general 
peace and security of community advanced. 
The following instance demonstrates this posi- 
tion : — " In Tuscany, as we have seen, neither 
murder nor any other crime was punished with 
death, for more than twenty years, during which 
time we have not only the official declaration of 
the sovereign, that ' all crimes had diminished, 
and those of an atrocious nature had become 
extremely rare;' but the authority of the vener- 
able Franklin for these conclusive facts — that 
in Tuscany, where murder was not punished 
with death, only five had been committed in 
t*;<snf,y years ; while in Rome, where that pun 
* Dick's Philosophy of Religion, p. 153 



KINDNESS AND PUNISHMENT. 211 

ishment is inflicted with great pomp and pa- 
rade, sixty murders were committed in the short 
space of three months, in the city and the vicin- 
ity. * It is remarkable [he adds to this account] 
that the manners, principles and religion of the 
inhabitants of Tuscany and those of Rome, are 
exactly the same. The abolition of death alone, 
as a punishment for murder, produced this dif- 
ference in the moral character of the two na- 
tions.' From this it would appear that the mur- 
derers of Tuscany were invited by the severer 
punishments into the neighboring territories of 
Rome, than that those of Rome were attracted 
into Tuscany by their abolition."^ 

The whole history of national, social, school, 
and family government may be traced through- 
out, and its clearest voice is, that cruel and re- 
vengeful punishments have increased crime and 
insubordination ; while mild and merciful chas- 
tisements, tempered according to the criminality 
of offenders, and manifesting an attempt to pro- 
duce moral health in them, have decreased crime 
and encouraged obedience and good order. 
Cruel punishments, aiming at no other end than 
the infliction of pain, kindness unequivocally 
condemns. But those punishments whose ob- 

* O'Sullivan's Report, p. 105 — a work which can- 
not be too strongly recommended to the notice of those 
who wish well for society and all its members. 



212 . LAW OF KINDNESS. 

jeet is to reform sinners, repress crime, encour- 
age virtue, preserve good order, and protect 
society, kindness unequivocally approves ; for 
kindness is an enemy to lawlessness and a friend 
to all righteousness. These propositions are in 
perfect accordance with the instructions of the 
Saviour, who, while he taught his people to 
love their enemies, also declared^ that he who 
was worthy of many stripes, should receive 
them, and he who was deserving of few stripes, 
should receive few stripes. 

Such, then, are our views of kindness when 
considered in reference to punishment. And 
while it is as foreign from lawlessness as light 
hi from darkness, how different would be the 
aspect and prospects of the world, if it was en- 
tirely governed by the law, " overcome evil with 
good." What seas of blood would remain un- 
shed — what unholy deeds of persecution and 
bigotry would remain in oblivion — what a tide 
of revengeful feelings would have no existence 
— what numberless oppressions of the widow 
and the orphan would remain unpractised — and 
what cruel tyranny would remain without exe- 
cution ! How beautifully the moral world would 
bloom with the brightest flowers of mercy, and 
goodness, and affection ! The halls of litigation 
would be emptied, the bench of the judge would 

* Luke xii. 47, 48. 



KINDNESS AND PUNISHMENT. 213 

be unvisited, and the staff of the officer would 
become useless. From the rivers to the ends 
of the earth, the universal language of Chris- 
tianity, the kindness of brotherhood, would be 
acknowledged and practised. The sword would 
become a ploughshare and the spear a pruning- 
hook ; nation would hold communion with na- 
tion, and the natives of one kingdom would visit 
those of any other kingdom with perfect assur- 
ance of safety. The Gospel would then prac- 
tically become " good news of glad tidings to all 
people ;" and on earth, " peace, good will towards 
men.' , The whole earth would echo with songs 
of salvation ; the isles would be glad, and the 
continents would rejoice, while the oceans and 
rivers would echo back the glorious theme, 
until all men, enlightened with truth and purified 
with virtue, subscribed to the great fact, God is 
the universal father of all ; messiah is the 
universal Saviour of all ; man is the brother 
of man, and his rule of action towards his brethren 
should be, in all the fulness of holiness, " Over- 
come evil with good;" until the all-pervading 
principle of goodness should pour the waters of 
love upon every spark of discord and revenge. 
How well did the poet say : — 

a I Ve thought, at gentle and ungentle hour, 
Of many an aet and giant shape of power j 



214 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

Of the old kings, with high enacting looks, 

Sceptred and globed ; of eagles on their rocks. 

With straining feet, and that fierce mouth and drear. 

Answering the strain with downward drag austere ; 

Of the rich-headed lion, whose huge frown, 

All his great nature, gathering seems to crown j 

Then of cathedral, with its priestly height, 

Seen from' below at superstitious night ; 

Of ghastly castle, that eternally 

Holds its blind visage out to the lone sea ; 

And of all sunless subterranean deeps 

The creature makes who listens while he sleeps ; 

Avarice ; and then of those old earthly cones 

That stride, they say, over heroic bones ; 

And those stone-heaps Egyptian, whose small doors 

Look like low dens under precipitous shores ; 

And him, great Memnon, that long sitting by, 

In seeming idleness, with stony eye, 

Sang at the morning's touch, like poetry ; 

And then of all the fierce and bitter fruit 

Of the proud planting of a tyrannous foot, 

Of bruised rights, and flourishing bad men, 

And virtue wasting heavenwards from a den ; 

Brute force, and fury, and the devilish drougth 

Of the foul cannon's ever-gaping mouth ; 

And the bride-widowing sword j and the harsh bray 

The sneering trumpet sends across the fray ; 

And all which lights the people-thinning star 

That selfishness invokes — the horsed war, 

Panting along with many a bloody mane. 

I We thought of all this pride, and all this pam, 
And all the insolent plentitudes of power, 
And I declare, by this most quiet hour, 



KINDNESS AND PUNISHMENT. 215 

Which holds in different tasks by the fire-light 
Me and my friends here, this delightful night, 
That Power itself has not one-half the might 
Of Gentleness. 'T is want to all true wealth ; 
The uneasy madman's force to the wise health ; 
Blind downward beating, to the eyes that see ; 
Noise to persuasion, doubt to certainty ; 
The consciousness of strength in enemies, 
"Who must be strained upon, or else they rise \ 
The battle to the moon, who all the while, 
High out of hearing, passes with her smile ; 
The tempest, trampling in his scanty run, 
To the whole globe that basks about the sun * 
Or as all shrieks and clangs, with which a sphere, 
Undone and fired, could rake the midnight ear, 
Compared with that vast dumbness nature keeps 
Throughout her starry deeps, 
Most old, and mild, and awful, and unbroken. 
Which tells a tale of peace beyond whate'er was 
spoken." * 

These thoughts are worthy of the sublime 
subject. They speak its grandeur, and vividly 
contrast its mild and constant energy with ter- 
rific force and violence. It is a subject of which 
nothing too sublime and grand can be uttered. 
For kindness not only deals with the finite ; it 
is also the essence of infinity itself. It burns in 
its purity in the human soul ; and it is the ma- 
jestic influence which forms the vast truth that 
"GOD IS LOVE." 

* Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt, p. 172— Lond ed., 1832. 



CHAPTER XII 



TIIE BLESSINGS AND DUTY OF PRACTISING THE 
LAW OF KINDNESS. 

" Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase !) 
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
And saw within the moonlight in his room, 
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, 
An angel writing in a book of gold ; 
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, 
And to the presence in the room he said, 
1 What writest thou ? ' The vision raised its head, 
And with a look made of all sweet accord, 
Answer' d, ( The names of those who love the Lord.' 
( And is mine one ? ' said Abou. 'INay, not so/ 
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, 
But cheerly still, and said, ' I pray thee, then, 
Write me as one that loves his fellow- men.' 

The angel wrote and vanish'd. The next night 
It came again with a great wakening light, 
And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd 
And lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." 

Leigh Hunt. 

In whatever manifestation of its influence, 
the exercise of kindness may be considered, it 
will always confer a rich blessing upon the in- 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 217 

dividual who directs it and the individual upon 
whom it is brought to bear. Genuine kindness 
never carries blight and ruin with it, like the 
tornado ; it always goes forth like the light and 
heat of the sun, bearing peace, joy, and sympa- 
thy to all whom it reaches. And when it re- 
turns to him who has exerted it, the rewards 
which earthly things can form, are given him — 
or if he is not in a situation to require assistance 
from those who have felt the gentle dew of his 
affection, his soul is filled with the calm and 
steady, but ecstatic thought that others have 
been made happy by his actions. He can well 
appreciate the language of Lathrop — 

" Beneficence, regardless of herself, — 
Of pridt / ambition, policy or pelf, — 
Enjoys in blest return, for one poor mite, 
A mine, an empire, of sublime delight." 

The history of life furnishes not a single 
illustration of the law of kindness, but proves 
the sacred declaration," cast thy corn upon moist 
ground, and after many days thoit shalt find it."* 
For, as certain as corn will yield its increase to 
the sower, so certain is it that kindness flows 
back upon its worshipper with a hundred-fold 
of pure felicity. Well was it said by Hannah 
Moore — 

• 

* Translation by Girard— Biblical Institute:!, p. 142 
19 



2 IS LAW OF KINDNESS. 

" And he, whose wakeful tenderness removes 
The obstructing thorn which wounds the friend he 

loves, 
Smooths not another's rugged path alone, 
But scatters roses to adorn his own." 

It is the fact breathing in this poetry, which 
accounts for the simple but comprehensive answer 
which the good Oberlin returned as a reply to 
a question put to him by a visitor : " * la ich bin 
glucklich,' (Yes, I am happy.)" ^ His incessant 
labors, in the humblest circumstances and with 
the greatest obstacles, for the good of his people, 
yielded him an abundant reward in their very ex- 
ercise. Nor can any person doubt but that the 
venerable Franklin received the most exquisite 
pleasure, when, in reply to a letter from the cel- 
ebrated George Whitefleld, to whom he had ren- 
dered a kindness, he wrote as follows : " As to 
the kindness you mention, I wish it could have 
been of more service to you. But if it had, the 
only thanks I should desire is, that you would be 
equally ready to serve any other that may need 
your assistance, and so let good offices go round; 
for mankind are all of a family."! To the same 
purport is a letter which he wrote while in 
Paris, to a man who desired money of him : 

# Dr. Epp's Essays, p. 53. 

t Life of Franklin, No. 93, Famly Library, p 1 J*. 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 219 

" I send you herewith a bill for ten louis-d'ors ; 
I do not pretend to give such a sum, I only lend 
i: to you. When you shall return to your coun- 
try, you cannot fail of getting into some business 
that will in time enable you to pay all your 
debts. In that case, when you meet with an- 
other honest man in similar distress, you must 
pay me by lending this sum to him, enjoining 
him to discharge the debt by a like operation 
when he shall be able, and shall meet with such 
another opportunity. I hope it may thus go 
through many hands before it meets with a 
knave to stop its progress. This is a trick of 
mine for doing a deal of good with a little 
money. "^ The venerable sage no doubt re- 
ceived exquisite gratification in thus doing good 
to his fellow-men. 

Reflection will prove to us, that the exercise 
of kindness rewards its followers abundantly, by 
cultivating their affections and increasing their 
desrres to become instruments of good in the 
pilgrimage of life. For it is unquestionably 
ttue, that, in the forgiveness of enemies, and in 
relieving the distresses of the suffering, we as- 
similate ourselves with the spirit of God and of 
Christianity; and of course strengthen the 
sources of happiness within us. Is there not 

* Penny Magazine, Vol. ill., p. 37). 



220 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

instruction touching this fact, in the fallowing 
poetry ? — 



" How beautifully falls 
From human lips that blessed word — forgive ! 
Forgiveness — it is the attribute of gods — 
The sound which openeth heaven — renews again 
On Earth lost Eden's faded bloom, and flings 
Hope's halcyon halo on the waste of life. 
Thrice happy he whose heart has been so schooled 
In the meek lessons of humanity, 
That he can give it utterance ; it imparts 
Celestial grandeur to the human soul, 
And maketh man an angel."' 

V 

Those who become acquainted with the noble 
pleasure of administering kindness to others, 
find a tie which binds them to life, even if there 
was scarcely any other attraction to render it 
desirable. To this effect, Eogers, in his poem 
on " Italy," relates an incident which he received 
from a Piedmontese nobleman, who, weary of 
life, determined to commit suicide. 

" I was weary of life, and after a day such 
as few have known and none would wish to re- 
member, was hurrying along the street to the 
river, when I felt a sudden check. I turned 
and beheld a little boy, who had caught the 
skirt of my cloak in his anxiety to solicit my 
notice. His look and manner were irresistible, 
Not less so was the lesson he had learnt 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 221 

* There are six of us, and we are dying for want 
of food.' Why should I not, said I to myself, 
relieve this wretched family ? I have the 
means, and it will not detain me many minutes. 
But what if it does ? The scene of misery he 
conducted me to I cannot describe. I threw 
them my purse — and their burst of gratitude 
overcame me. It filled my eyes — it went as a 
cordial to my heart. I will call again to-morrow, 
I cried. Fool that I was, to think of leaving a 
world where such pleasure was to be had, and 
so cheaply ! " 

The individual who is kind to his fellow-be- 
ings, does not pursue kindness without an over 
flowing reward — for he thereby deposites a trea- 
sure, which, at some period in his earthly career, 
will develop itself as the result of his benevo- 
lence. Witness the touching fact which follows : 
" An aged man, named Bonvouloir, appeared 
before the sixth chamber, (Paris,) charged with 
the ' crime ' of mendicity. While answering the 
usual questions of the President, a young man, 
accompanied by his wife, advanced towards the 
bar, and, turning his eyes upon Bonvouloir, 
wept aloud. The name of this individual, as it 
afterward appeared, is Bouvet, whip-maker ; and 
we feel pleasure in recording it in connection 
with an act which ennobles human nature. 
President — >Why do you weep?' Bouvet^- 



222 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

* Sir, I know that poor old man ; I know him 
as one knows a father, for he was a father 
to me ! It was he who took care of my infancy, 
it was he who brought me np ; and to see him 
thus reduced in his old age! My wife and I 
have come to beg of you, gentlemen, to have the 
goodness to give him up to our care. We will 
treat him kindly, Mr. President; we will do 
for him, in his helplessness, what he did for me 
in mine.' The young wife ofBouvet, (shedding 
tears,) — 'Oh! yes, Mr. President, we will take 
care of poor Mr. Bonvouloir, who was so good 
to my husband when he was but a little desti- 
tute child. Do, sir, let us have him — pray, gen- 
tlemen, don 't refuse us ! ' During these affect- 
ing supplications, it is impossible to describe the 
joy, the admiration, the ineffable expression of 
delight, that beamed on the face of that aged 
man, who found a triumph where he had only 
dared to hope for pity. The audience, the 
judges themselves, evinced deep emotion, and 
one of the latter, much to his honor, shed tears ! 
M. le President Mathias, in pronouncing Bon- 
vouloir's acquittal, thus addressed him : ' You 
see, my good old man, that a benevolent action 
never goes unrewarded. You generously pro- 
tected Bouvet in his childhood, and to-day he 
and his young wife come nobly forward to shel- 
ter your gray hairs. The tribunal feel happy 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 223 

in rendering you to their affection and their 
gratitude.' "^ 

Another instance is to the full as affecting as 
the one last given, and as radiant with melting 
power in demonstrating that kindness is never 
an unprofitable exercise. When the proud but 
unfortunate Cardinal Wolsey fell beneath the 
displeasure of Henry the Eighth of England, 
all his former friends despised and deserted him, 
with the exception of an individual by the name 
of Fitz- Williams, who had been patronised by 
Wolsey, and by whom his talents and good 
qualities had been appreciated and drawn out. 
Fitz- Williams took Wolsey to his country seat, 
and treated him as though he was still the 
favorite of the king. When the king heard of 
this conduct of Fitz- Williams, he sent for him, 
and in anger inquired why he harbored Wolsey 
when resting under the imputation of high trea- 
son. " Sire," said he, " it is not the disgraced 
minister or the state-criminal that I have receiv- 
ed into my house ; it is my benefactor and pro- 
tector ; he who has given me bread, and of 
whom 1 hold the fortune and tranquillity I enjoy. 
Ah, Sire, if I had abandoned him in his misfor- 
tune, I should have been the most ungrateful of 

* Quoted from Galignani's Messenger into the TJniver- 
salist Union, Vol. II., p. 368. 



224 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

men."* This kindness so affected Henry, that 
he conceived the highest esteem for Fitz- Wil- 
liams, whom he knighted and created his Privy 
Counsellor. In this instance, kindness mani- 
fested a three-fold result. Wolsey found a re- 
ward for being kind to Fitz- Williams, in the 
pretection he enjoyed — Fitz- Williams found a 
reward for being kind to Wolsey, in the satis- 
faction of his soul and the countenance of the 
king — while a proud and angry monarch was 
melted into a friend by the love of the law, 
"overcome evil with good." 

The next instance is one which the reader 
will find capable of drawing forth his tears, not 
only at the heavenly kindness manifested in it r 
but also in viewing the tender sympathy, the 
true felicity and the warm attachment breathing 
throughout it. It is related by G. P. Morris, 
one of the editors of the New York Mirror, t 
in a delightful article on the preciousness of 
miniatures as mementoes of departed friends. 
After speaking of their value, he says — 

" Our thoughts were more particularly turn- 
ed to this subject by an occurrence which once 
took place within our immediate observation, 
and which must be responsible for the length of 
the time during which we have thus unwarily 

* Parlor Book, p. 143. 

f Mirror for December 15, 1832. 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 225 

trespassed on the good nature of the reader. A 
poor, destitute Swiss, nearly sixty years of age, 
with a very imperfect knowledge of English, 
was taken into a family whom we are gratified 
to name among our friends, and in which the 
pervading spirit was kindness, peace and cheer- 
ful content, from the mistress to the lowest ser 
vant. She who superintended this little Eden 
was herself all that became a wife, a mothei 
and a friend. Through her intercession the 
wretched old man was taken out of the street, 
cleaned, clothed, treated well, and put to such 
labor as fitted his years and animated him 
with the consciousness of being useful without 
pressing too heavily upon his age and infirmi- 
ties. It happened, although he came without 
recommendation, without a friend, and under 
circumstances of absolute beggary, that he was 
of a warm and grateful disposition, and a char- 
acter inflexibly honest and noble. We shall 
not soon forget his broad picturesque forehead 
ploughed deep with wrinkles, and thinly cloth- 
ed with silver hairs, which to the gentle heart 
of his mistress had pleaded powerfully, and con- 
tinued to secure to him a kind of good-natured 
reverence and forbearance, as grateful in her as 
welcome to him. Poor old John ! He had not 
a single friend in the wide world but those in that 
happy mansion ; and though it is a bitter thing 



226 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

at any age to feel one's self adrift and friendless 
on the cold, bleak ocean of life, and especially 
so when time has taken the strength from our 
limbs, and the hope from our heart, and we have 
no other prospect but to go down to the grave 
neglected to the last, and unblessed with those 
friendly offices which soften the grim face of 
death himself; yet old John, we verily believe, 
was contented in his situation ; and never ser- 
vant was more faithful and persevering in min- 
istering to the wants of all. The children play- 
ed around him, and pushed him about, as you 
have seen them presume upon the long estab- 
lished kindness of some ancient family mastiff, 
who takes all in perfect kindness, though the 
sight of a stranger would be followed by such 
a display of teeth, as would make a lion think 
twice before he concluded upon a conflict. The 
truth is, old John's mistress had won his heart. 
He did not only love, he revered her. Nothing 
made him so utterly happy as an opportunity of 
doing her any service ; and if there were an 
errand to be run — and the distance was far, and 
the night was stormy — so much the better. Old 
John would wrap his rough great-coat about 
him, and his good-humored and fine-looking 
face would glow with pleasure, as the gratitude 
of his honest soul shone through. Excellent old 
mar ! we wish there were more like thee, for 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 227 

the world's sake and for our own. Never gath- 
ered together a more delightful, a more delight- 
ed family circle, than drew around the fire-side 
of that well-remembered mansion, when the 5 
wintry wind moaned by the well -barred shut- 
ters, and no member of it more cheerful than 
™ old John." Indeed, his peculiar character — 
his simplicity— and withall, the beauty of his 
appearance, made him a favorite. He never got 
a cjross word or a sour look in those golden times. 
" One night a large party was given in a dis- 
tant part of the city, to which they were all in- 
vited, A slight cold had been prevalent in the 
family, and among its earliest victims was Mrs. 

L herself. The evening was tempestuous, 

and the exposure necessary in going and com- 
ing, increased it to a degree almost alarming. A 
few days confined her to her bed. Physician 
after physician came, prescription after prescrip- 
tion, days, weeks, months, rolled gloomily away. 
The gay voice of mirth was hushed to a whis- 
per, and checked was the free and elastic step 
of youth and joy. Winter disappeared; Spring, 
beautiful Spring, with her leaves and buds, came, 
and the glad earth breathed everywhere the 
spirit of happiness and beauty. Even Summer 
approached in its turn, with its magnificent 
mornings — its gorgeous sunsets — its long, still, 
holy nights — and yet there lay the lovely and 



228 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

gentle girl — for she was yet in the bloom of 
youth — pale and emaciated, with dark languid 
eyes, and long skeleton-withered hands — pant- 
ing patiently on her pillow. At length she died. 
We went there one morning; the maid, with 
eyes inflamed, admitted us, and in reply to our 
inquiries, only sobbed. The husband met us 
with a ghastly face, but perfectly calm arid 
quiet, and taking our hand silently, but with a 
firm grasp, which betrayed a high degree of 
nervous excitement, led us into the darkened 
chamber. Yes ! the tremendous crisis was 
passed. That radiant summer face was frozen 
at- last to wintry desolation. Oh death ! how 
awful, how mysterious thou art ! 

" Old John had been sent from the city seve- 
ral days before, on some business, and did not 
return till after the funeral obsequies were per- 
formed. Poor fellow ! he did not even know of 
her death. We were the first to meet him on 
the threshold. He looked up fearfully in our 
face, and asked, ' How is she to-day ? ' The be- 
reaved husband happened to be passing at the 
moment through the hall. We pointed to his 
hat, from which hung the fatal emblem of death 
— a long black crape. The truth burst upon 
him at once. He lifted his eyes to heaven a 
moment — the big tears gushed forth and drop- 
ped on the floor. He went away, and for some 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 229 

time we saw him no more. Just before the 
sickness of his lamented benefactress, she had 
sat for her miniature to an artist of consummate 
skill. When ' old John ' appeared again, know- 
ing his affection for the original, the painter 
begged leave to show it to him. We were 
present when the old man was to be indulged 
with the sight, without being conscious of what 
he was going to see. The artist brought it 
before him suddenly, passed his hand over it 
slowly, and then presented it to him in full 
view. It is impossible to describe the poor fel- 
low's surprise, delight, wonder, and grief. He 
clasped his hands together, and then dashed 
away the drops that sprang into his eyes and 
obstructed his view, and with such pathetic ex- 
clamations of love and anguish bursting from 
his lips, as at once proved him to be fully sus- 
ceptible to the enchantment, and furnished a 
flattering evidence of the painter's skill." 

This enchanting relation requires no com- 
ment — it is one of those brilliant exhibitions of 
kindness, which stand upon the page of life, like 
the evening star upon the deep blue of heaven, 
carrying conviction to the soul, that beneficence 
blesses the giver and receiver. But, that fact 
may be piled upon fact, I hesitate not in adding 
the following noble instance of kindness. The 
author I know not. 
20 



230 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

" Pigalle, the celebrated artist, was a man of 
great humanity. Intending, on a particular oc- 
casion, to make a journey from Lyons to Paris, 
he laid by twelve louis-d'ors to defray his ex- 
penses. But a little before the time proposed 
for his setting out, he observed a man walking 
with strong marks of deep-felt sorrow in his 
countenance and deportment. Pigalle, impelled 
by the feelings of a benevolent heart, accosted 
him, and inquired, with much tenderness 
whether it was in his power to afford him any 
relief. The stranger, impressed with the man- 
ner of this friendly address, did not hesitate to 
lay open his distressed situation. 

"'For want of ten louis-d'ors,' said he, 'I 
must be dragged this evening to a dungeon ; 
and be separated from a tender wife and a nu- 
merous family.' 'Do you want no more?' ex- 
claimed the humane artist. 'Come along with 
me; I have twelve louis-d'ors in my trunk; and 
they are all at your service.' 

" The next day a friend of Pigalle 's met him, 
and inquired whether it was true, that he had, 
as was publicly reported, very opportunely 
relieved a poor man and his family, from the 
greatest distress. ' Ah, my friend ! ' said Pi- 
galle, ' what a delicious supper did I make last 
night upon bread and cheese, with a family 
whose tears of gratitude marked the goodness 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 231 

of their hearts ; and who blessed me at every 
mouthful they ate !"' 

An incident which occurred in the life of the 
celebrated Aaron Burr, affords an admirable il- 
lustration of the fact that kindness never forgets 
him who exercises it. I remember perfectly 
well of having frequently read the fact — but 
where, has faded from my memory. The sub- 
stance of it is as follows : — When Burr was 
in the height of his prosperity, he, on one 
occasion, while travelling in Western New 
York, saw in a tavern where he happened to 
stop, what appeared to be an excellent line-en- 
graving. The landlord informed him that it 
was executed with a pen, by a stupid boy, who 
was his apprentice at blacksmith ing, and with 
whom he expected he could do nothing. Burr, 
discovering the native talent of the boy, endeavor- 
ed to obtain him — but his master, suspecting that 
he had some secret valuable power about him 
refused to part w r ith him. When Burr left he 
whispered to the boy to come to New York city, 
inquire for Aaron Burr, and he would be taken 
care of. Soon after, when Burr had forgotten the 
circumstance, the boy presented himself, and was 
assisted by his benefactor. He then went abroad, 
and became the celebrated Vanderlyn, who, in 
Paris, acquired honor and a good share of this 
world's goods. After Burr had fallen from his 



232 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

greatness and was expelled fron the country, he 
was met in France, and in poveity, by Vander- 
lyn, who received him with deep gratitude, took 
him to his dwelling, and for a long time cherish- 
ed and sustained him with the utmost attention 
and kindness. By his benevolence to that poor 
boy, Burr laid up a treasure, which, in after- 
days of want and sorrow, returned to him with 
great increase — the more prized from the fact 
that it came unexpectedly, in time of need, 
when almost every one had forsaken him. How 
vividly must Burr have appreciated the fact, 
that kindness abundantly rewards him who 
exercises it ! 

The following fact is extracted out of the 
New York Times and Star, of December, 1840, 
and refers to an individual who died on the third 
of that month. " More than thirty years ago 
Mr. Prime, then engaged in business at Boston, 
became embarrassed and failed. So well satis- 
fied, however, was one of his creditors with his 
integrity and business talents, that he loaned 
him five hundred dollars with which to com- 
mence business in this city. Mr. Prime's success 
in this city is familiar to all. In course of time, 
the creditor who had assisted him, became him- 
self insolvent. Mr. Prime immediately took his 
affairs in hand, rendered him pecuniary aid, and 
at his death, settled upon his widow an annuity 
of five hundred dollars." 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 233 

The benefits arising from the exercise of the 
law of kindness, in some instances, are extended 
to large masses of individuals ; because, being 
general in its influence, it spreads from the indi- 
vidual to multitudes. How clearly this fact is 
evinced in the Temperance Eeformation, whose 
cheering sun, guided by persuasion and benev- 
olence, is scattering its light into every civilized 
nation of the earth. Previous to the excitement 
which is raising the intemperate from degra- 
dation to respectability and happiness, they 
were met with harshness and contempt. It 
was believed that they could not be redeemed , 
and it was publicly said, that the more rapidly 
they died, the better it was for community at 
large. They were bitterly reproved for their 
vice, and were treated as the offscourings of the 
earth — while the fact that they were hated and 
despised, only served to rivet the manacles of 
intemperance more firmly around their habits. 

But a new era has arisen — new views have 
unfolded themselves — the power of kindness 
lias stretched out its hand to lift drunkards out 
of the mire and the gutter ; to clothe and feed 
them and their families — and its voice has told 
them that they are yet men ; that they can, by 
the aid of the love of God, break up the evils 
with which they are surrounded, and come forth 
to usefulness, virtue, and prosperity. And we 
20* 



234 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

have seen that the law of kindness has effected 
a work, which revenge could never accomplish. 
In poor, oppressed Ireland, under the mild influ- 
ence of father Matthew, the noble-minded and 
affectionate Catholic priest, over three millions 
of her once degraded sons have taken the pledge 
of total abstinence, thus securing to themselves 
comfort, peace, and respectability. And in our 
own country, from every dark corner of vice, 
there has come forth a vast army of inebriates, 
who, under the banner of temperance, are spread- 
ing abroad the holy power of virtue. The con- 
sequences are, the filthy dens of debauchery are 
emptying, the idle are becoming industrious, 
crime is decreasing, poverty is lessening, ragged 
children are clothed, once sorrowful wives are 
rejoicing, and degraded men are becoming use- 
ful members of society. These are the im- 
mense results of tender persuasion in the cause 
of temperance. And when those individuals 
who have engaged in this work, discover 
the great light of joy and virtue which has 
sprung from their benevolent exertions to save 
the intemperate, do they not realize that their 
reward is ample, in the very fact that they have 
been the humble instruments of so much good ? 
To increase the sum of happiness, is, in itself, 
the source of great pleasure. 

These instances, which might be greatly mul- 



PRACTICAL DUTY AND BLESSINGS. 235 

tiplied, prove that, in every case, an ample re- 
ward is returned to him who wields the power 
of the Christian Law, " overcome evil with 
good." If my readers are doubtful of this po- 
sition, let them test the subject by a vigorous 
practice of noble kindness ; and by excellent ex- 
perience will they realize that " blessed are the 
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." And, in 
order to give them the holiest example of kind- 
ness with which this earth has ever been bless- 
ed, as a guide to all benevolence, it appears to 
me perfectly proper to conclude this work with 
a simple exhibition of the Character cf Christ, 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 
"Who went about doing good." — Peter. 

We are not now to dwell upon the character 
of a heathen hero, or to twine a garland for the 
brow of a conqueror whose victories swim in 
blood — we are not now to eulogize frail, erring 
man, or to sing the song of praise to one who 
has swept through the world like a fiery meteor, 
blighting the happiness of multitudes. 

To us is given the pleasant and instructive 
duty of exhibiting the character of an individual, 
who has been viewed with deep devotion for 
eighteen centuries, and is now the light of ex- 
ample to multitudes in all quarters of the globe, 
from the pale Laplander in his snows to the 
sable African in his burning sun; from the 
humblest intellect to the mightiest philosopher ; 
from the gates of Gibraltar to the feet of the ev- 
erlasting mountains. To us is given the rejoic- 
ing theme of receiving that Saviour, whose 
voice constantly warns men from the inhospita- 
ble coasts of sin, whose truth breaks the chains 
of error from every mind, and whose hallowed 



LfcAlACTER OF CHRIST. 237 

words are ministering angels in the house of 
death. To us is given the privilege of behold- 
ing the conduct of the Messiah of the prophets, 
the long promised Shiloh, the beloved Son of 
God, the Saviour of the world, over whose 
birth angels sang in tones of joy, and death fled 
in dismay at the prospect of his defeat. 

Our minds could not entertain a more delight- 
ful subject, or one that kindles in the soul more 
of the living energies of virtue and the desire 
of growing in philanthropy. The Saviour's 
character, when held up with all its lovely 
qualities before the mind, awakens the dormant 
feelings, and leads the creature in prayer to the 
spiritual cross of the Saviour, to beseech for 
wisdom in imitating the pure conduct and God- 
like spirit of the Redeemer. 

It is well to commune with the conduct of 
great and good men : to mingle our thoughts 
with the thoughts of the pious and religious ; to 
trace their character, and observe how they in- 
fluence others ; — it is well, because such com- 
munion with pure and noble conduct as irre- 
sistibly wins the admiration of the soul as the 
magnet attracts the needle. Who can reflect 
upon the unblanching fearlessness of the apos- 
tles in the presence of their bitter foes ; upon 
their resolute perseverance when threatened 
with prisons and premature death ; upon their 



238 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

continued exertions in proclaiming a world's 
salvation, in spite of every obstacle ; without 
becoming inspired by their ardor, and enlivened 
with a virtuous enthusiasm to examine the sys- 
tem they proclaimed ? Who can reflect upon 
the fervent and earnest benevolence of Howaid 
and the Sisters of Charity — upon their active 
exertions in alleviating the distresses of men 
and women, without fear of pestilence and con- 
tagion, and without expectation of reward — and 
not have a thrill of admiration pass through the 
mind, leaving a strong desire to follow in the 
paths of their benevolence ? Who can reflect 
upon the stern integrity, unshaken virtue and 
fearless patriotism of Washington, as well as the 
indomitable exertions and granite firmness of 
the fathers of the revolution, without enrolling 
himself a friend to liberty, by consecrating all 
his powers upon the altars of knowledge and 
virtue ? Dwelling upon the character of these 
individuals, opens the spring of our feelings, 
strengthens our better nature, and gives a deeper 
tone of purity to our actions. 

But the character of Christ possesses still 
more powerful influence, because it is more per- 
fect than that of any person who has ever graced 
earthly life. Nothing can be more pure than 
the character of the Saviour. The records of 
time may be searched ; the patriots, the philos- 



CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 239 

ophers, the moralists of the world may be con- 
sulted — all their fame, their benevolence, their 
intellect, their virtue, may be admired— and ye 
no person can equal the purity and holiness of 
the Saviour. The only individual who even 
shadows a likeness of his character, is an im- 
aginary being described by Plato in the second 
book of his Commonwealth, where he repre- 
sents a man as giving to the world unquestioned 
proofs of his sincerity. He says, " Let him be 
stripped of all things in this world except his 
righteousness ; let him be poor and afflicted, 
and accounted a wicked and unjust man ; let 
him be whipped and tormented, and crucified 
as a malefactor, and yet all this while retain his 
integrity." Where can the original of this pic- 
ture be found, save in the person of him who 
suffered on the cross ? 

In the Saviour all the principles of heaven 
shone with the brilliancy of the sun and the 
richness of virtue. How adorable was the Re- 
deemer ! You may behold men and women 
famed for benevolence — you may behold men 
celebrated for patriotism and uncompromising 
integrity — you may behold men dignified with 
all that nobleness which makes human nature 
truly gre«at — you may behold men whose pious 
exertions and ardent benevolence have trans- 
formed semi-savage and ignorant people into 



240 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

enlightened and affectionate neighbors — you 
may behold men whose uniform kindness and 
sweetness of disposition have subdued the most 
bitter foes and obtained the protection of con- 
tending warriors — and all the principles which 
make these men truly great, all the virtues 
which adorn their lives, are united and sub- 
limed in the person of the Lord cur Righteous- 
ness. There was in him such a ringliag of 
humility and dignified feeling ; such an associ- 
ation of gentleness, vigor, benevolence and for- 
giveness ; such a blending of devotion, virtue, 
truth and love ; combined with such power of 
thought, such beauty of doctrine, such admirable 
illustration in the most winning manner of com- 
munication ; and sealed by such heroic devotion 
to the welfare of the world ; that Rosseau, skep- 
tic as he was, described the character of Christ 
in the most charming thoughts and the highest 
tones of admiration ; while the coarse but pow- 
erful mind of Paine praised him as a virtuous 
and amiable reformer. Indeed, so comprehen- 
sive is the character of Christ, that if the whole 
number of the precepts of the Bible be gathered 
together, the conduct of the Saviour forms the 
noblest, because practical, commentary upon 
them all. If we bring to view all the instances 
of devotion for country, all the instances of the 
purest benevolence, all the instances of gener- 



CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 241 

ous sacrifice, which the history of the world pre- 
sents , the devotion, the benevolence, and the 
sacrifice of Christ, are as much superior to them, 
as the sun is superior to the evening star. Of 
this fact we shall be touchingly convinced, by 
directing out thoughts to some of the traits of 
character which ennoble the " Son of man." 

He was ever obedient to, and mindful of his 
parents. With him it was " honor thy father and 
thy mother." In his youth he was subject to 
their commands, and ready to heed their words. 
And when the chain of his life had run out, and 
his days were numbered — when his labors had 
ceased, then his filial love was manifested in its 
purity. For in that season when his integrity 
was impeached ; when the doom of a malefactor 
was upon him ; when the agony of the nails 
was felt ; then he provided for the future protec- 
tion of his mother. Hence we read, " When 
Jesus therefore saw his mother, and that disci- 
ple standing by whom he loved, he saith unto 
his mother, 'Woman, behold thy son!' — then 
saith he to the disciple, ' Behold thy mother ' ' — 
and from that hour that disciple took her unto 
his own home." * Could any fact be more touch- 
ing, than that the Saviour, when he saw his 
mother, forgot his own terrible agonies, forgot 

* John xix. 26, 27. 
21 



242 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

the horrors of his situation, forgot the jeers of 
his enemies, in his anxiety to provide a home 
for her before he died. Son; thou who hast 
neglected father and mother, and art bring- 
ing their gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, 
by intemperance, debauchery, and profanity ; who 
hast forgotten their wants and left them to suf- 
fer in their declining years ; — Daughter ; thou 
who yieldest no respect to thy parents, and meet- 
est them with harsh and unkind words; — re- 
pent; and as thou wishest the blessings of a 
peaceful conscience when thy parents sleep in 
the grave — come and kneel at the foot of the 
cross, and pray, " Saviour, fill me with thy filial 
love ; and like thee, teach me ever to honor my 
father and my mother." 

The integrity of the Saviour was unimpeach- 
able. No wrong motive, however glittering 
and fascinating, ever influenced him. When 
the crown of Israel sparkled over his head; 
when, by assuming the tokens with which the 
Jews expected their temporal Messiah to appear, 
he might have ruled in Palestine ; when the 
Jews actually came to make him a king, he was 
not for a moment swayed from his duty ; — he 
neither, like Napoleon, grasped the golden 
sceptre, nor with Alexander the Great, sat down 
and cried because there were no more worlds 
for him to conquer — but the crown was viewed 



CHARACTER CF CHRIST. 243 

as a bauble, the dominion was thrust aside, and 
animated by the holy duty of winning souls 
to truth and virtue, he enfolded himself with di- 
vine integrity, and said, " My kingdom is not of 
this world." And throughout the whole of the 
chequered scenes of his ministry, and in the 
midst of the most adverse circumstances, no act 
was marred with vice, nor was any practice 
identified with wrong. So pure was his life, so 
spotless his conduct, that when the Roman Cen- 
turion, himself a pagan and an unbeliever in the 
Messiah, saw the Saviour on the day of his cru- 
cifixion and at the time of his death, in the 
greatness of his admiration he was compelled to 
exclaim, "Truly this was the Son of God." 

One of the most beautiful traits in the charac- 
ter of the Saviour, was his compassion, so inti- 
mately connected as it was with the most active 
benevolence. Distress found an answering 
voice in his heart — and wo enlisted all his feel- 
ings. How tender were his words to the sons 
and daughters of grief! How soothing the 
truths he held out to the sorrow-smitten ! 
When he saw the obstinacy of the Jews, their 
heedlessness of the warnings that destruction was 
hovering over them, their determination to cru- 
cify the Son of God, and their blindness in 
rushing into the very jaws of fate ; when he re- 
membered the doom of the city of Jerusalem, 



244 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

the famine and thirst which its people must en- 
dure, to the obliteration of all the affections of 
the heart ; when he remembered the heaps of 
slain which must encumber her streets and fill 
the valley of the son of Hinnom — the Son of 
God wept over the vicious but ill-fated city, and 
would have turned away its ruin. And after 
he had left the judgment-hall of Pilate, and was 
bearing his cross to Calvary, and saw that a 
great company of women followed him with 
lamentations, he remembered the dreadful fate 
of those women when Palestine should be deso- 
lated by the Eoman deluge. Hence he said to 
them, " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for 
me, but weep for yourselves and for your chil 
dren."^ 

Even his miracles, stupendous as they were, 
set forth his compassion and benevolence with 
a power which falls upon the soul like the dews 
of heaven, causing the better feelings of oui 
natures to gush like the fresh and limpid waters 
of the spring. So far as his mission was con- 
cerned, he might unquestionably have performed 
miracles, by rending the mountains, by parting 
the waters of the lake, by tearing rocks from 
their foundations, and by making seed become 
stately trees in a few hours. But no ! — this 
course did not suit the Son of God — his mira- 

*Lukexxiii. 28 



CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 245 

cles must not only establish his divine mission, 
but they must also beam with benevolence and 
shine with the love of heaven. When the 
groans of the fevered wretch fell upon his ear, 
he drove away the fire burning in the human 
frame. When he heard the voice of the blind 
man, crying, " Jesus, thou Son of David, have 
mercy on me," he opened his eyes to the count- 
less beauties of nature. When he saw the vic- 
tim of palsy, chained in physical decrepitude, 
he returned vigor to the nerves and power to 
the muscles. When he met the dumb and deaf, 
shut out from all the music of the human voice 
and the charms of harmony, he loosened the 
tongue and regulated the sense of hearing. 
When he beheld the weeping sister of Lazarus, 
and remembered that his friend was dead, the 
Son of God not only wept himself, but he deliv- 
ered Lazarus from the power of death. And 
when he looked upon^.the melancholy train 
bearing the remains of the only son of the 
widow of Nain, he stopped the bier, and said, 
" Daughter, weep not." He then commanded 
the lungs of that dead son once more to exert 
themselves — the blood of health once more to 
course through his arteries and veins, waking 
up the dormant energies of life — and returned 
him to the arms of his mother, a living form. 
In all these things, how the compassion and be- 
21* 



246 LAW OF KINDNESS* 

nevolence of the Saviour shone forth ! — a com- 
passion and a benevolence whose influence will 
not cease to be felt, so long as one pulse shall 
beat or one heart shall thrill with sympathy. 
Different indeed were the actions of the Saviour 
from the actions of the conqueror, the debau- 
chee and the tyrant. Blessings ever grew in 
his pathway, and the praise of the poor and 
afuicted ever formed a wreath of glory for his 
brows. Oh ye, who freeze up the best feelings 
of the soul while worshipping as an idol-god 
the golden mammon of this world — ye, who 
have no ear for the cries of the widow and the 
orphan — ye, who drive the starving wretch from 
your gates, unpitied and unfed, though ye roll 
in luxuries — come to the Saviour ; behold him 
wandering without a place whereon to lay his 
head ; behold his divine compassion, even when 
laboring to secure your salvation; behold, re- 
pent, and exhibit that benevolence which will 
lessen misery and strengthen virtue. 

Another trait in the character of the Saviour, 
is one, which, if the world had heeded it, would 
have destroyed that vast amount of misery, 
which has poured its blight in devastation and 
ruin over the earth. When we look back into 
history, and see how mind has been cramped 
and fettered by force — how many sects have, at 
different periods, claimed exclusive power, and 



CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 2-17 

attempted to make other sects succumb to them 
by that power — how many millions of persons 
have been slaughtered for difference of opinion 
— and how affection has been destroyed, liberty 
of thought chained, and family happiness frozen 
by persecution's iron hand — it makes the heart 
bleed, and causes man to veil himself in sor- 
row at the follies of a worm of the dust, who, 
himself the child of error, rises up to claim in- 
fallibility over his brethren. But persecution 
finds no countenance in the Saviour. He re- 
cognised the mind as the noblest work of God, 
exceedingly far more precious than all the forms 
of mere matter. His kingdom was in mind, 
and he threw not a fetter upon it, nor did he cast 
an impediment in its onward path to truth in the 
untried regions of religion and science. He 
ever taught the Jews that it was their privilege, 
as well as their duty, to judge for themselves what 
was right, and to search the Scriptures freely, 
as in them they thought they had eternal life. 
And when, on a certain occasion, as he travelled 
towards Jerusalem, he sent forth his disciples to 
prepare a place of rest for the night, and a 
Samaritan village refused to receive them, and 
they asked him for fire from heaven to destroy 
that village, what was his answer ? Was it the 
answer of the fanatic and the enthusiast, who 
would sustain what they call the glory of God 



248 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

at the point of the bayonet and the mouth of 
the cannon ? Far from it. " Ye know not of 
what manner of spirit ye are," was the rebuke 
of the heavenly teacher. And when Christ was 
betrayed by the words of a professed friend, and 
Peter drew a sword and cut off an ear of one of 
the servants, what said Christ ? " Put up thy 
sword into the sheath ; the cup which my 
Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" 
The Son of God, the Lord our Righteousness, 
never gave one hair of strength to a persecuting 
spirit, or spake one word which can be tortured 
into approval of reviling sectarism. No ! Kis 
aim ever was to take mind from the degradation 
of vice and error, and enrich it with the freedom 
of truth. And had the Christian world remem- 
bered but one precept of the humble Saviour, 
" Whatsoever ye would that men should do to 
you, do ye even so to them," how many prisons 
would have remained untenanted, how many 
racks would have remained unused, and how 
many stakes would have remained unlighted ! 
No witches would have then been hung, or 
Baptists whipped, or Quakers killed, by pilgrim 
fathers. Nor would sects be so estranged from 
each other ; nor would the fear of fashion and 
popularity prevent so many from avowing what 
they conceive to be truth ; mind would every- 
where be free, and righteousness observed. 



CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 249 

Another noble trait in the character of the 
Saviour, is his spirit offorgive?iess. In this re- 
spect he stands far exalted above all beings that 
have ever lived on the earth — for how almost 
universally has the spirit of revenge been prac- 
tised by the world, and how almost universally 
it is now practised. How many persons in 
ancient and modern times have and do advocate 
that it is contrary to honor and proper spirit to 
forgive an injury or an affront. How infinitely 
superior are the spirit and conduct of Christ to 
the spirit and conduct of this world. He taught 
his disciples the divine precept, " Love your 
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to 
them that hate you, and pray for them who 
despite fully use you and persecute you." And 
how did he illustrate this precept ? Did he 
pour blasting and mildew among his enemies ? 
Did he call down the legions of angels which 
his Father could give him, and scatter death 
upon his opposers ? Far, very far from it. 
Amid all the persecutions which were heaped 
upon him, all the contumely which he endured, 
the malice and revenge of his foes, yet never, 
in one instance, did he forget to forgive, or to 
meet evil with goodness. And in his last hours, 
when he had been condemned and nailed to the 
cross by the testimony of perjured wretches, 
though surrounded by his murderers, who 



250 LAW OF KININESS. 

mocked his agonies and jeered his pretension, 
then the dying sufferer added a most holy and 
divine comment to all his teachings, when foi 
those very enemies he prayed, " Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do." Can 
the records of history or the annals of the world 
present such another instance as this, of pure 
forgiveness ,? Have our dreams even, come up 
to the fact, of an individual dying in the midsl 
of his foes, yet praying for their welfare ? Ah, 
who can meditate upon this glorious feature in 
the Saviour's character and conduct, and refuse 
to forgive his brother, even until seventy times 
seven ? "Who, when the Saviour died for his 
forgiveness, can still cherish a revengeful spirit, 
and refuse to forgive his foe? Hard indeed 
must that heart be, which can resist a Saviour's 
love and still nurse unkind feelings. 

But the grand seal of the Saviour's character, 
its express brightness and particular glory, is 
his love for the human family and his undying 
devotion for its interests, expressed at the ex- 
pense of his earthly happiness and life ; and in 
a. manner, which, if we were called upon to fulfil 
it, would have frozen our blood to its deepest 
fountain, and made us flee with affright. But 
our Saviour, though at the very beginning he 
was aware of all that awaited him, yet steadily 
persevered to the time of the end, until he had 
drained the cup of wo of its last bitter dreg, 



CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 251 

On all sides he met the sharpest opposition, 
His motives were impeached, his conduct mis- 
rep-esented, and his doctrine caricatured. The 
Pharisees on the one hand, and the Sadducees 
on the other, were constantly seeking for oppor- 
tunities to destroy him. He was possessed of 
no earthly home. Though the birds of the ail 
and the foxes of the desert had nests and holes, 
yet the Son of man had not where to lay his 
head. He was constantly and bitterly perse- 
cuted, until, by the treachery of one of his own 
followers, he was betrayed. Before Pilate he 
stood ; and there, rather than suffer Christ to go 
free as an innocent man, the Jews called for a 
leader of sedition and a murderer to be let loose, 
and condemned Jesus bj perjury. Dreadful 
situation ! His pure name attainted, met by a 
malefactor's doom, mocked by Roman soldiers, 
scourged as a criminal, he was led to Calvary, 
and there, between two thieves, he was nailed 
to the cross ; and, while forsaken by his follow- 
ers and scoffed by his foes, he breathed out his 
spirit to God who gave it. Most cruel death ! 
Most painful sacrifice ! Yet most sublime doom ' 
Christ met it ; met it in its fulness and dread — 
and what for ? Have angels sung it to you ? — 
is it written on your hearts ? He died to do 
battle with death, to plunge into the tomb, to 
rob him of his sting, to burst the cerements of 



252 LAW OF KINDNESS. 

the grave, to come forth the " first-born from 
the dead," to bring life and immortality to light, 
\o establish those principles which will ultimate- 
ly mould all souls into holiness, and prepare 
them for the spiritual presence of God. In a 
word, he died for a lost and sinful world, that 
its people might live in truth ana virtue. Ah, 
dear Saviour, how great were thy pains — how 
severe thy sufferings — yet how cheerfully en- 
dured for men ! Oh, may thy love so subdue 
our passions and warm our feelings, that we 
may discover that the cross shows the perfection, 
the magnanimity, the grand finish of the char- 
acter of the Saviour. Come to the foot of the 
cross, fellow-sinner, and tell me if any of thy 
imperfections are there ! Tyrant ! — is thy re- 
flection there ? Profaner ! — is thy ingratitude 
there ? Cold professor ! — is thy lukewarmness 
there ? Hypocrite ! — is thy deceit there ? Dis- 
honest man ! — is thy conduct there ? Persecu- 
tor ! — is thy hard heart there ? Miser ! — is th} 
want of benevolence there ? Oh no ! Love so 
pure, so holy, was there, as to convince us thai 
Jesus was indeed the Son of God. 

Such was the Saviour ! and if the traits of 
his character are shadowed in the soul, they 
make the creature not only pre-eminently kind, 
but a MAN in all the noWe thoughts which that 
word conveys. *> . ^ 

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